Colonists upwards of forty years had elapsed, and around the
wide spread posts of the Fur Trading Companies, especially around those
of the prairie, there had grown up families, which were half French and
half Indian, or half English and half Indian. When it could be afforded
these children were sent for a time to Montreal, to be educated, and
came back to their native wilds. On the plain between the Assiniboine
and the Saskatchewan, a half-breed community had sprung up. From their
dusky faces they took the name "Bois-Brulйs," or "Charcoal Faces," or
referring to their mixed blood, of "Metis," or as exhibiting their
importance, they sought to be called "The New Nation." The blend of
French and Indian was in many respects a natural one. Both are stalwart,
active, muscular; both are excitable, imaginative, ambitious; both are
easily amused and devout. The "Bois-Brulйs" growing up among the Indians
on the plains naturally possessed many of the features of the Indian
life. The pursuit of their fur-bearing animals was the only industry of
the country. The Bois-Brulйs from childhood were familiar with the
Indian pony, knew all his tricks and habits, began to ride with all the
skill of a desert ranger, were familiar with fire-arms, took part in the
chase of the buffalo on the plains, and were already trained to make the
attack as cavalry on buffalo herds, after the Indian fashion, in the
famous half-circle, where they were to be so successful in their later
troubles, of which we shall speak. Such men as the Grants, Findlays,
Lapointes, Bellegardes, and Falcons were equally skilled in managing the
swift canoe, or scouring the plains on the Indian ponies. We shall see
the part which this new element were to play in the social life and even
in the public concerns of the prairies.


THE STATELY HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.

The last of the elements to come into the valley of the Red River and to
precede the Colonists, was the Hudson's Bay Company--even then, dating
back its history almost a century and a half. They were a dignified and
wealthy Company, reaching back to the times of easy-going Charles II.,
who gave them their charter. For a hundred years they lived in
self-confidence and prudence in their forts of Churchill and York, on
the shore of Hudson Bay. They were even at times so inhospitable as to
deal with the Indians through an open window of the fort. This was in
striking contrast to the "Nor'-Wester" who trusted the Indians and lived
among them with the freest intercourse. For the one hundred years spoken
of, the Indians from the Red River Country, the Saskatchewan, the Red
River and Lake Winnipeg, found their way by the water courses to the
shores of the Hudson Bay. But the enterprise of the Montreal merchants
in leaving their forts and trading in the open with the Indians,
prevented the great fleets of canoes, from going down with their furs,
as they had once done to Churchill and York. The English Company felt
the necessity of starting into the interior, and so within six years of
the time of the expedition of Thomas Curry, appeared five hundred miles
inland from the Bay, and erected a fort--Fort Cumberland--a few hundred
yards from the "Nor'-Westers'" Trading House, on the Saskatchewan River.
By degrees before the end of the century almost every place of any
importance, in the fur-producing country, saw the two rival forts built
within a mile or two of each other. Shortly before the end of the 18th
Century, the "Nor'-Westers" came into the Red River Valley and built one
or two forts near the 49th parallel, N. lat.--the U.S. boundary of
to-day. But four years after the new Century began, the "Nor'-Westers"
decided to occupy the "Forks" of the Red and Assiniboine River, near
where Verandrye's Fort Rouge had been built some sixty years before.
Evidently both companies felt the conflict to be on, in their efforts to
cover all important parts, for they called this Trading House Fort
Gibraltar, whose name has a decided ring of the war-like about it. It is
not clear exactly where the Hudson's Bay post was built, but it is said
to have rather faced the Assiniboine than the Red River, perhaps near
where Notre Dame Avenue East, or the Hudson's Bay stores is to-day. It
was probably built a few years after Fort Gibraltar, and was called
"Fidler's Fort." By this time, however, the Hudson's Bay Company,
working from their first post of Cumberland House, pushed on to the
Rocky Mountains to engage in the Titanic struggle which they saw lay
ahead of them. One of their most active agents, in occupying the Red
River Valley, was the Englishman Peter Fidler, who was the surveyor of
this district, the master of several forts, and a man who ended his
eventful career by a will made--providing that all of his funds should
be kept at interest until 1962, when they should be divided, as his last
chimerical plan should direct. It thus came about that when the
Colonists arrived there were two Traders' Houses, on the site of the
City of Winnipeg of to-day, within a mile of one another, one
representing a New World, and the other an Old World type of mercantile
life. It was plain that on the Plains of Rupert's Land there would come
a struggle for the possession of power, if not for very existence.




CHAPTER II.

"A SCOTTISH DUEL."


Inasmuch as this tale is chiefly one of Scottish and of Colonial life,
the story of the movement from Old Kildonan, on the German Ocean, to New
Kildonan, on the Western Prairies--we may be very sure, that it did not
take place without irritation and opposition and conflict. The Scottish
race, while possessing intense earnestness and energy, often gains its
ends by the most thoroughgoing animosity. In this great emigration
movement, there were great new world interests involved, and champions
of the rival parties concerned were two stalwart chieftains, of
Scotland's best blood, both with great powers of leadership and both
backed up with abundant means and strongest influence. It was a
duel--indeed a fight, as old Sir Walter Scott would say, "a
l'outrance"--to the bitter end. That the struggle was between two
chieftains--one a Lowlander, the other a Highlander, did not count for
much, for the Lowlander spoke the Gaelic tongue--and he was championing
the interest of Highland men.

The two men of mark were the Earl of Selkirk and Sir Alexander
Mackenzie. Before showing the origin of the quarrel, it may be well to
take a glance at each of the men.

Thomas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, was the youngest of seven sons, and was
born in 1771. Though he belonged to one of the oldest noble families, of
Scotland, yet when he went to Edinburgh, as a fellow student of Sir
Walter Scott, Clerk of Eldon, and David Douglas, afterward Lord Reston,
it was with a view of making his own way in the world, for there were
older brothers between him and the Earldom. He was a young man of
intense earnestness, capable of living in an atmosphere of
enthusiasm--always rather given indeed to take up and advocate new
schemes. There was in him the spirit of service of his Douglas
ancestors, of being unwilling to "rust unburnished," and he was strong
in will, "to strive, to seek, to find." This gave the young Douglas a
seeming restlessness, and so he visited the Highlands and learned the
Gaelic tongue. He went to France in the days of the French Revolution,
and took great interest in the Jacobin dreams of progress. The minor
title of the House of Selkirk was Daer, and so the young collegian saw
one Daer depart, then another, until at last he held the title, becoming
in 1799 Earl of Selkirk and was confirmed as the master of the beautiful
St. Mary's Isle, near the mouth of the Dee, on Solway Frith. On his
visits to the Highlands, it was not alone the Highland straths and
mountains, nor the Highland Chieftain's absolute mastership of his clan,
nor was it the picturesque dress--the "Garb of old Gaul"--which
attracted him. The Earl of Selkirk has been charged by those who knew
little of him with being a man of feudal instincts. His temper was the
exact opposite of this. When he saw his Scottish fellow-countrymen being
driven out of their homes in Sutherlandshire, and sent elsewhere to give
way for sheep farmers, and forest runs, and deer stalking, it touched
his heart, and his three Emigration Movements, the last culminating in
the Kildonan Colonists, showed not only what title and means could do,
but showed a kindly and compassionate heart beating under the starry
badge of Earldom.

Rather it was the case that the fur trading oligarchy ensconced in the
plains of the West, could not understand the heart of a
philanthropist--of a man who could work for mere humanity. Up till a few
years ago it was the fashion for even historians, being unable to
understand his motive and disposition, to speak of him as a "kind
hearted, but eccentric Scottish nobleman."

Lord Selkirk's active mind led him into various different spheres of
human life. He visited France and studied the problem of the French
Revolution, and while sympathizing with the struggle for liberty, was
alienated as were Wordsworth and hundreds of other British writers and
philanthropists, by the excesses of Robespierre and his French
compatriots. When the Napoleonic wars were at their height, like a true
patriot, Lord Selkirk wrote a small work on the "System of National
Defence," anticipating the Volunteer System of the present day. But his
keen mind sought lines of activity as well as of theory. Seeing his
fellow-countrymen, as well as their Irish neighbors, in distress and
also desiring to keep them under the British flag, he planned at his own
expense to carry out the Colonists to America. Even before this effort,
reading Alexander Mackenzie's great book of voyages detailing the
discoveries of the Mackenzie River in its course to the Arctic Sea, and
also the first crossing in northern latitudes of the mountains to the
Pacific Ocean--he had applied (1802), to the Imperial Government, for
permission to take a colony to the western extremity of Canada upon the
waters which fall into Lake Winnipeg. This spot, "fertile and having a
salubrious climate," he could reach by way of the Nelson River, running
into Hudson Bay. The British Government refused him the permission
necessary. Lord Selkirk's first visit to Canada was in the year 1803, in
which his colony was placed in Prince Edward Island. Canada was a
country very sparsely settled, but it was then turning its eyes toward
Britain, with the hope of receiving more settlers, for it had just seen
settled in Upper Canada a band of Glengarry Highlanders. Lord Selkirk
visited Canada by way of New York. To a man of his imaginative
disposition, the fur trade appealed irresistibly. The picturesque
brigades of the voyageurs hieing away for the summer up the Ottawa
toward the land of which Mackenzie had written, "the Nor'-Wester" garb
of capote and moccassin and snowshoe, and the influence plainly given by
this the only remunerative industry of Montreal, caught his fancy. Then
as a British peer and a Scottish Nobleman, the fun-loving but
hard-headed Scottish traders of Montreal took him to their hearts. He
met them at their convivial gatherings, he heard the chanson sung by
voyageurs, and the "habitant" caught his fancy. He was only a little
past thirty, and that Canadian picture could never be effaced from his
mind. In after days, these "Lords of the North" abused Lord Selkirk for
spying out their trade, for catching the secrets of their business which
were in the wind, and for making an undue use of what they had disclosed
to him. In this there was nothing. His schemes were afire in his own
mind long before, his Montreal experiences but fanned the flame, and led
him to send a few Colonists to Upper Canada to the Settlement to
Baldoon. This settlement was, however, of small account.

In 1808 though inactive he showed his bent by buying up Hudson's Bay
Company stock. During this time projects in agriculture, the condition
of the poor, the safety of the country, and the spread of civilization
constantly occupied his active mind. The Napoleonic war cut off the vast
cornfields of America from England, and as a great historian shows was
followed by a terrible pauperization of the laboring classes.

There is no trace of a desire for aggrandizement, for engaging in the
fur trade, or for going a-field on plans of speculation in the mind of
Lord Selkirk. The feuds of the two branches of the Montreal Fur
traders--the Old Northwest and the New Northwest--which were apparently
healed in the year after the Colonization of Prince Edward Island, were
not ended between the two factions of the united company led by
McTavish--called the Premier--on the one hand and Sir Alexander
Mackenzie on the other.

During these ten years of the century, the Hudson's Bay Company had also
established rival posts all over the country. The competition at times
reached bloodshed, and financial ruin was staring all branches of the
fur trade