CHAPTER XXVIII

1816-1820

THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS CONTINUED—GOVERNOR SEMPLE AND TWENTY COLONISTS ARE BUTCHERED AT SEVEN OAKS—SELKIRK TO THE RESCUE CAPTURES FORT WILLIAM AND SWEEPS THE NOR’WESTERS FROM THE FIELD—THE SUFFERING OF THE SETTLERS—AT LAST SELKIRK SEES THE PROMISED LAND AT RED RIVER.

Here, then, is the position, June 17, 1816.

My Lord Selkirk is racing westward from Montreal to the rescue of his Red River colonists with two hundred men made up of disbanded De Meuron and De Watteville soldiers and French canoemen.

William McGillivray has gathered all the Eastern partners of the Northwest Company together—McLoughlin, the doctor; Simon Fraser, the explorer; McLeod, the justice of the Peace; Haldane, McLellan, McGillis, Keith and the rest—and with a hundred armed men and two cannon, is dashing for Red River to outrace Selkirk, rescue Duncan Cameron, restore Fort Gibraltar, and prevent the forcible eviction of the Northwest Company from Assiniboia.

Selkirk goes by way of Lake Ontario and the modern Simcoe. The Nor’Westers follow the old trail up the Ottawa.

In the West, blacker gathers the storm. Deprived of their pemmican by Semple’s raids, the Nor’Westers rally their Plain Rangers under Cuthbert Grant to Alexander McDonell of Qu’ Appelle, determined to sweep down the Assiniboine and meet the up-coming express from Montreal at all hazards. This will prevent Semple capturing those provisions, too. Incidentally, the Plain Rangers intended to rescue Cameron from the Hudson’s Bay men. They do not know he has been sent to the bay. Incidentally, too, they intend “to catch Robertson and skin him and feed him to the dogs.” They do not know that he, too, has gone off in a huff to the bay. Gibraltar is to be restored. They do not know that it has been dismantled. Then, when the Nor’West partners come from the East, the Hudson’s Bay people are to be given a taste of their own medicine. No attack is planned. The Plain Rangers are to keep away from Fort Douglas; but the English company is to be starved out, and if there is resistance—then, in the language of Alex McDonell, mad with the lust of revenge for the death of Eneas—“the ground is to be drenched with the blood of the colonists.”

In Fort Douglas sits Robert Semple, Governor ofthe Colony, his cannon pointed across Red River to stop all trespassers on Selkirk’s domain.

One other chessman there is in the desperate game. Miles MacDonell, the captured governor of Red River, has been released at Montreal and is speeding westward in a light canoe with good cheer to the colonists—word of Selkirk’s coming.

Red River is the storm center. Toward it converge three different currents of violence: the Plain Rangers from the West; Selkirk’s soldiers, and the Nor’Westers’ men from the East. What is it all about? Just this—shall or shall not the feudal system prevail in the Great Northwest? Little cared the contestants about the feudal system. They were fighting for profits in terms of coin. They were pawns on the chess board of Destiny.

Comes once more warning to the blinded Semple, secure in his beliefs as if entrenched in the castle of a feudal baron. A chance hunter paddles down the Assiniboine to Red River. “My governor! My governor!” the rough fellow pleads. “Are you not afraid? The Half-breeds are gathering! They are advancing! They will kill you!”

“Tush, my good man,” laughs Semple, “I’ll show them papers proving that we own the country.”

“Ownthe country? What doesthatmean?”The freeman shakes his head. No man owns these boundless plains.

Comes again Moustache Batino, whom Doctor White had healed of a wound.

“A hundred and fifty Bois Brulés (Burnt Wood Runners) are at the Portage of the Prairie! They will be here by to-morrow night.”

“Well, what of it? Let ’em come,” smiles Semple.

The Indian ruminates—Is this Englishman mad?

“Mad! Nonsense,” says Semple to his secretary, Wilkinson. “They will never be such fools as to break the law when they know we have right on our side.”

But old Chief Peguis of the Sauteurs knows nothing at all about that word “law.” June 18th, at night when the late sunset is dyeing the Western prairies blood red, Peguis knocks at the fort gates.

“Governor of the gard’ners and land workers,” he declares, “listen to me—listen to me, white man! Let me bring my warriors to protect you! The Half-breeds will be here to-morrow night. Have your colonists sleep inside the fort.”

Semple grows impatient. “Chief,” he declares, “mark my words! There is not going to be any fighting.”

All the same Peguis goes to Marie Gaboury,Lajimoniere’s wife. “White woman,” he commands, “come you across the river to my tepee! Blood is to be shed.”

And Marie Gaboury, who has learned to love the Indians as she formerly feared them, follows Chief Peguis down the river bank with her brood of children, like so many chickens.

Such is her fright as she ensconces the children in the chief’s canoe, that she faints and falls backward, upsetting the boatload, which Peguis rescues like so many drowned ducklings, but Lajimoniere’s family hides in the Pagan tent while the storm breaks.

On the evening of June 19th, the boy on watch in the gate tower calls out, “the Half-breeds are coming.” Semple goes up to the watchtower with a spyglass. So do Heden, the blacksmith; and Wilkinson, the secretary; and White, the doctor; and Holte, the young lieutenant of the Swedish Marines; and John Pritchard, who has left the Nor’Westers and joined the colony; and Bourke, the storekeeper.

“Those certainly are Half-breeds,” says Pritchard, pointing to a line of seventy or a hundred horsemen coming from the west across the swamps of Frog Plain beyond Fort Douglas toward the colony.

“Let twenty men instantly follow me,” commandsSemple. “We’ll go out and see what those people want.”

Bayonets, pistols, swords are picked up in confusion, and out sallies a little band of twenty-seven men on foot.

The Half-breeds are not approaching Fort Douglas. They are advancing toward the colony. Half a mile out, Semple meets the colonists rushing for the fort in a wild panic. Alex McBeth, a colonist who had been a soldier, calls out, “Keep your back to the river, Governor! They are painted! Don’t let them surround you.”

“There is no occasion for alarm! I am only going to speak to them,” answers Semple, marching on, knee-deep through the hay fields. All the same, he sends a boy back with word for Bourke, the storekeeper, and McLean, the farmer, to hitch horses and drag out the cannon. As the Half-breeds approach Semple sees for himself they are daubed in war paint and galloping forward in a semi-circle. Young Holte of the Marines becomes so flustered that he lets his gun off by mistake, which gives the Governor a start.

“Mind yourself,” Semple orders. “I want no firing at all.”

“My God, Governor! We are all lost men,” mutters Heden, the blacksmith; and Kilkenny, a fightingIrishman, begs, “Give me leave, Governor! Let me shoot; or we shall all be shot. There’s Grant, the leader. Let me pick off Grant!”

“No firing, I tell you,” orders Semple angrily, and the two parties come in violent collision on a little knoll of wooded ground called Seven Oaks.

With Grant are our old friends of the Saskatchewan—Falçon, the rhyming poet; and Boucher, son of the scout shot on the South Saskatchewan; and Louis Primo, old reprobate who had deserted Cocking fifty years ago; and two of Marguerite Trottier’s brothers from Pembina; and a blackguard family of Deschamps from the Missouri; and seventy other Plain Rangers from the West.

Followed by a bloodthirsty crew hard to hold, Cuthbert Grant was appalled to see Semple march out courting disaster.

“Go tell those people to ground their arms and surrender,” he ordered Boucher.

“What do you want?” demanded Semple as Boucher galloped up.

“Our fort,” yelled Boucher forgetting his message.

“Then go to your fort!” vehemently ordered Semple.

“Rascal! You have destroyed our fort,” roared the angry Half-breed.

“Dare you address me so?” retorted Semple, seizing the scout’s gun. “Men—take him prisoner!”

“Have a care you do me no ill,” shouted Boucher slipping off the other side of his horse, prancing back.

“Take him prisoner—I say! Is this a time to be afraid?” shouts Semple.

“My God! We are all dead men,” groans Sutherland, the Scotch colonist, for the dread war whoop had rent the air. There was a blaze of musketry, and there reeled back with his arms thrown up—young Holte, the officer who had boasted that with the Lake Winnipeg schooner “he would give the Northwest scoundrels a drubbing.” Another crash, and Semple is down with a broken thigh. Cuthbert Grant dismounts and rushes to stop the massacre. “I am not mortally wounded! Take me to the fort,” gasps Semple. Grant turns to call aid. The Deschamps stab the Governor to death on the spot. The firing lasts less than fifteen minutes, but twenty of the Hudson’s Bay men have fallen, including all the officers, four colonists, fifteen servants. Captain Rodgers is advancing to surrender when he is hacked down. Of the twenty-seven who followed out, Pritchard, the former Nor’Wester, is saved by surrender; and five men escape by swimming across the river. As for the cannon, Bourke is trundlingit back as fast as the horses can gallop. McLean, the settler, has been slain. One, only, of the Plain Rangers, Batoche, has been killed; only one wounded—Trottier of Pembina; and Cuthbert Grant at last succeeds in stopping the infuriated rabble’s advance and drawing off to camp west of Seven Oaks.

No need to describe the blackness of the work that night on the prairie. The Half-breeds wreaked their pent-up vengeance on the bodies of the slain. Let it be said to the credit of the Nor’Westers, they had no part in this ghoulish work. The worst miscreants were the Deschamps of the Missouri, whose blood-stained hands no decent Indian would ever touch after that night. In camp, Pierre Falçon, the rhymster, was chanting the glories of the victory, and Pritchard was pleading with Grant for the lives of the women and children. For years afterward—yes, even to this day—terrible stories were told of the threats against the families of the colonists; but let it be stated there was never at any time the shadow of a vestige of a wrong contemplated against the women and children. What Indians might do, old Chief Peguis had shown. What the Deschamps, who were half-white men, might do—the mutilated bodies of the dead at Seven Oaks revealed.

Pritchard was sent across to the fort with word that the colonists must save themselves by surrender.Otherwise, Grant could not answer for their safety among his wild Plain Rangers. The panic of the two hundred people inside was pitiable. For a second time they were to be driven houseless to the wilderness, and yet the bolder spirits were for manning the fort and resisting siege. If only they could have known that Selkirk was coming; but Lajimoniere lay captive in the butter-vat prison at Fort William, and Miles MacDonell had not yet come. Without help, how could two hundred people subsist inside the palisades? A white sheet was tied on the end of a pole, and the colonists marched out on June 22nd, at eight in the morning, Grant standing guard to protect them as they embarked in eight boats for Lake Winnipeg. Before abandoning Fort Douglas, Angus Matheson and old Chief Peguis gather a few of the dead and bury them in a dry coulée near the site of the old Cree graveyard at the south end of modern Winnipeg’s Main Street. Other bodies are buried as they lie at Seven Oaks; but the graves are so shallow they are ripped open by the wolves. Grant rides along the river bank to protect the colonists from marauders till they have passed the Rapids ofSt.Andrew’s and are well beyond modern Selkirk.

Beyond Selkirk, at the famous camping place of Nettley Creek, whom should the colonists meet butthe Nor’ West partners galloping their canoes at racehorse pace to reach the field of action before Selkirk.

“What news?” calls Norman McLeod; but the news is plain enough in the eight boat loads of dejected colonists.

The Nor’Westers utter a war whoop, beat the gun’els of their canoes, shout their victory. “Thank Providence,” writes one partner, Robert Henry, “that the battle was over before we got there, as it was our intention to storm the fort. Our party consisted of one hundred men, seventy firearms, two field pieces. What our success might have been, I will not pretend to say; but many of us must have fallen in the contest.” The Nor’Westers have always maintained that they had not planned to attack Fort Douglas and that the onus of blame for the fearful guilt of Seven Oaks Massacre rested on Semple for coming out to oppose the Half-breeds, who were going to meet the Montreal express. Such excuse might do for Eastern law courts, whose aim was to suppress more than they revealed; but the facts do not sustain such an excuse. The events are now a century past. Let us face them without subterfuge. The time had come, the time was bound to come, when the rights of a Feudal Charter would conflict violently with the strong though lawless arm of Young Democracy.Therein lies the significance of what apologists and partisans have called the Skirmish of Seven Oaks.

Norman McLeod, the Justice of the Peace, hails the harried colonists ashore at Nettley Creek. They notice among the Northwest partners several soldiers dressed in regimentals—mark that, those who condemn Selkirk for hiring De Meuron soldiers! Two can play at the game of putting soldiers in red coats to bluff the Indians into believing the government is behind the trader. The settlers notice also, carefully hidden under oilcloth, two or three brass cannon in the Nor’Westers’ boats. Mark that, those who condemn Selkirk for bringing cannon along with his bodyguard!

As justice of the peace, Norman McLeod seizes the dead Semple’s baggage for incriminating papers. As justice of the peace—though it was queer kind of peace—he arrests those men who escaped from Seven Oaks, and claps them in irons that prevent Bourke, the storekeeper, from dressing his wounds. The colonists are then allowed to proceed to their wintering ground amid the desolate woods of Lake Winnipeg at Jack River.

The triumphant Nor’Westers do not wait long at Red River. McLeod goes on to rule like a despot in Athabasca. The others hurry back to their annual meeting at Fort William, for they know that Selkirkis coming West. Bourke and the prisoners are carried along to be thrown into the butter-vat prison. Dark are the plots the prisoners overhear as they journey up Winnipeg River and Rainy Lake down to Lake Superior. Alex McDonell of the Assiniboine, burning for revenge as usual, urges the partners to make “his Lordship pay dearly for his conduct coming west; for I will say no more on paper—but there—are fine quiet places along Winnipeg River, if he comes this way!” And one night in camp on Rainy Lake, Bourke, the prisoner, lying in the dark, hears the Nor’West partners discussing affairs. Selkirk’s name comes up. Says Alex McDonell, “The Half-breeds could easily capture him while he is asleep.” Bourke does not hear the other’s answer; but McDonell rejoins, “They could have the Indians shoot him.” Were they planning to assassinate Selkirk coming West? Who knows? Alex McDonell was ever more violent than the rest. As for Selkirk, when word of this conversation came to him, he took care neither to come nor go by Winnipeg River.

In passing back from Red River across Winnipeg Lake, the Nor’Westers pause to destroy that armed Hudson’s Bay schooner, which was “to sweep Northwest canoes” from the lake. Down at Fort William, the Hudson’s Bay prisoners are flung into the prisonalong with the captured scout, Lajimoniere. “Things have gone too far; but we can throw the blame on the Indians,” says William McGillivray.

“But there was not an Indian took part in the massacre,” retorts Dr. John McLoughlin, always fair to the native races, for he has married the Indian widow of that Alex McKay of MacKenzie’s voyages and Astor’s massacred crew.

In the despatches which were stolen from Lajimoniere, Selkirk had written to Colin Robertson that he was coming to Red River by way of Minnesota to avoid clashes with the Nor’Westers at Fort William. By July he had passed from Lake Simcoe across Georgian Bay to the Sault. Barely had he portaged the Sault to Lake Superior when he meets Miles MacDonell, his special messenger, galloping back from Red River in a narrow canoe with word of the massacre.

What to do now? Selkirk could go on to Red River by way of Minnesota; but his colonists are no longer there. At the Sault are two magistrates of the Indian country—Mr. Askin and Mr. Ermatinger. Lord Selkirk swears out information before them and appeals to them to come with him and arrest the Northwest partners at Fort William. They refuse point-blank. They will have nothing to do with thisquarrel between the two great fur companies—this quarrel that really hinges on feudalism versus democracy; English law as against Canadian. To obtain justice in Eastern Canada is impossible. That, Selkirk has learned from a winter of futile bickering for military protection to prevent this very disaster. Selkirk writes fully to the new governor of Canada—Sir John Sherbrooke—that having failed to obtain protection from the Canadian courts he has determined to go on, strong in his own right—as conferred by the charter and as a justice of the peace—to arrest the Northwest partners at Fort William. “I am reduced to the alternative of acting alone, or of allowing an audacious crime to pass unpunished. I cannot doubt it is my duty to act, though the law may be openly resisted by a set of men accustomed to consider force the only criterion of right.”

The Nor’Westers had forcibly invaded and destroyed his colony. Now he was forcibly to invade and destroy their fort. Was his decision wise? Was it the first misstep into the legal tangle that broke his courage and sent him baffled to his grave? Let who can answer! Be it remembered that the Canadian authorities had refused him protection; that the Canadian magistrates had refused him redress.

His De Meuron soldiers had not worn their military suits. He bids them don their regalia now andmove forward with all the accouterments of war—a feudal lord leading his retinue!

“Between ten and eleven this morning, the Earl of Selkirk accompanied by his bodyguard, came up the river in four canoes,” writes Jasper Vandersluys, a clerk of Fort William, on August 12, 1816. “Between one and two, he(Selkirk)was followed by eleven or twelve boats, each having from twelve to fifteen soldiers all armed, who encamped on the opposite shore.” The afternoon passed with Selkirk’s men planting cannon along the river bank, heaping cannon balls in readiness and cleaning all muskets. Nor’West voyageurs and their wives rush inside the palisades. The women are sheltered in a central building upstairs above a trapdoor. The men are sent scurrying to hide one hundred loaded muskets in a hay loft. In the watchtower above the gates stand the Nor’West partners—William McGillivray, the three MacKenzies—Alex, son of Roderick; Kenneth, and old drunken, befuddled Daniel—Simon Fraser, the explorer; several of the McDonell clan, and Dr. John McLoughlin, shaking his head sadly at these preparations for violence. “There has been too much blood shed already,” he remarks.

Next afternoon comes a Hudson’s Bay messenger from Selkirk asking for McGillivray. McLoughlin and Kenneth MacKenzie accompany McGillivrayacross the river. One hour passes; two hours! The women, watching from the loft windows above the trapdoor, began to hope that a truce had been arranged. At seven in the evening the partners had come from the watchtower to shut the gates when two boat loads of some sixty soldiers glide up to the wharf. Fraser and Alex McDonell and old drunken Daniel MacKenzie rush to slam the gates shut. One leaf is banged when a bugle sounds! Captain D’Orsonnens of the soldiers, shouts “To arms, to arms,” plants his foot in the gateway and with flourishing sword rushes his men into the courtyard “with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, shouting, cursing, swearing death and destruction to all persons.” One Nor’Wester rushes to ring an alarm bell. The others have dashed for their apartments to destroy papers. In a twinkling, Selkirk’s men have captured every cannon in Fort William and are knocking at the doors of the central building. Not a gun has been fired; not a blow struck; not a drop of blood shed; but the trampling feet terrify the women in the attic. They crowd above the trapdoor to hold it down, when, presto! the only tragedy of the semi-farce takes place! The crowding is too much for the trapdoor. Down it crashes spilling the women into the room below, just as the astonished De Meurons dash into the apartment to seal alldesks and papers. It is a question whether the soldiers or the women received the greater shock; but the greatest surprise of all is across the river where the three Northwest partners are received by Selkirk between lines of armed soldiers and are promptly arrested, bail refused, for complicity in the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk allows them to go back to the fort on parole for the night and orders the liberation of those Hudson’s Bay prisoners in the butter-vat prison—Lajimoniere and the survivors of Seven Oaks, who tell my lord a tale that sharpens his vengeance. The night passes in alarm. Soldiers on guard at the room of each partner detect the Nor’Westers burning papers that might be used as evidence; and the loaded muskets are found in the hay loft; and furs are discovered stamped R. R.—H. B. C.—which have been rifled from some Hudson’s Bay post.

Day dawns in a drizzling rain. Across the river comes my Lord Selkirk, himself, with the pomp of a war lord, bugles blowing, soldiers in the boats with muskets on shoulders, a guard to the fore clearing the way. The common voyageurs are forthwith ordered to decamp to the far side of the river. Lord Selkirk takes up quarters in the main house, the partners being marched at bayonet point to other quarters. For four days the farce lasts. Lord Selkirkas justice of the peace examines and commits for trial all the partners present. The partners present scorn his assumption of authority and formally demand that the voyageurs be sent West with supplies for the year. Selkirk’s answer is to seize the voyageurs’ canoes and set his soldiers to using the palisades of Fort William for firewood. Then, under pretense of searching for evidence on the massacre at Seven Oaks, he seizes all Northwest documents. Under pretense of searching for stolen furs, he examines all stores. On August 18th, everything is in readiness to conduct the prisoners to Eastern Canada, all except old Daniel MacKenzie.

Drunken old MacKenzie is remanded to the prison for special examination. MacKenzie had long since been incapacitated for active service, and he treasured a grudge against the other partners for forcing him to resign. Why is MacKenzie being held back by Selkirk? Before the other partners are carried off, their suspicions are aroused. Perhaps they see Miles MacDonell and the De Meurons plying the old man in his prison with whiskey. At all events, they command the clerks left in charge to ignore orders from Daniel MacKenzie. They protest he has no authority to act for the Northwest Company. It may be they remember how they had jockeyed John Jacob Astor out of his fort on the Pacific by aforced sale; and now guess the game that is being played with Daniel MacKenzie against them. The partners’ baggage is searched. The De Meurons turn even the pockets of the haughty partners inside out. Then the prisoners are embarked in four large canoes under escort of De Meuron soldiers. The canoes are hurriedly loaded and badly crowded. Near the Sault, on August 26th, one swamps and sinks, drowning seven of the people, including the partner, Kenneth MacKenzie. Allan McDonell and Doctor McLoughlin escape by swimming ashore. At what is now Toronto, the prisoners are at once given bail, and they dispatch a constable to arrest Selkirk at Fort William; but Selkirk claps the constable in gaol for the month of November and then ignominiously drums him from the fort. With Selkirk, law is to be observed only when it is English. Canadian courts do not count.

Fuddled with drink, crying pitiably for more, Daniel MacKenzie passed three weeks a prisoner in the butter vat, three more a prisoner in his own room. Six weeks of dissipation, or else his treasured spite against the other partners, now work so on MacKenzie’s nerves that he sends for Miles McDonell on September 19th, and offers to sell out the Nor’Westers’ possessions, worth £100,000, at FortWilliam, to Lord Selkirk for £50 down, £2,000 in a year, and the balance as soon as the whole price could be arbitrated by arbitrators appointed by the Lords Chief Justice of England. “I have been thinking,” runs his rambling letter in the hand-writing of Miles McDonell, “that as a partner of the North-West Company and the only one here at present that I can act for them myself, that all the company’s stores and property here are at my disposal; that my sale of them is legal by which I can secure to myself all the money which the concern owes me and keep the overplus in my hands until a legal demand be made upon me to pay to those entitled.... I can not only dispose of the goods but the soil on which they are built if I can find a purchaser.”

Naturally, MacKenzie finds a purchaser in my Lord Selkirk of the Hudson’s Bay and almost at once receives his liberty. Just as McDougall had sold out the Americans on the Columbia, so MacKenzie now sells out the Nor’Westers at Fort William.

Then the old man writes rambling confessions and accusations which—he boasts to Selkirk—contain evidence “that will hang McGillivray” for the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk decides to send him to Eastern Canada as a witness against the partners, but before he is sent he writes circular letters to the wintering partners of the NorthwestCompany advising them to follow his example and save themselves from ruin by turning over their forts to Lord Selkirk. In October he is sent East, but by the time he reaches the Sault, his brain has cleared. He meets John McLoughlin and other Northwest partners returning to the Up Country and confesses what he has done. Instead of turning witness against them, he proceeds East to sue Selkirk for illegal imprisonment.

If Selkirk’s first mistake was trying to enforce feudalism on Red River and his second the raiding of Fort William, his third error must be set down as using an old drunkard for his tool. For the first error, he had the excuse that English law was on his side. For the second, he claimed that “Fort William had become a den of marauders and robbers and he was justified in holding it till the Nor’Westers restored Red River,” but for the trickery with old MacKenzie there existed no more excuse than for the lawlessness of the Nor’Westers. To say that Miles McDonell wrote the letters with MacKenzie’s signature and that he engineered the trick—no more clears Selkirk than to say that paid servants committed the most of the crimes for the Northwest partners. It is the one blot against the most heroic figure in the colonizing of the West. And the trick fooled no one. Not a voyageur, not a trader, flinched in his loyaltyto the Northwest Company. Not a man would proceed west with the canoes for the Hudson’s Bay officers.

The Lords of the North had fallen and their glory had departed; but not a man of the service faltered in his loyalty. It was a loyalty strong as the serf for the feudal baron.

From Fort William, Selkirk’s soldiers radiated to the Northwest posts of Rainy Lake and Minnesota. Peter Grant was brought prisoner from Fond du Lac for obstructing the Selkirk scout, Lajimoniere. At the Pic, at Michipicoten, at Rainy Lake, the De Meuron soldiers appear and the Northwest forts surrender without striking a blow. Then Captain D’Orsonnens sets out in December with twenty-six men for Red River. He is guided by J. Ba’tiste Lajimoniere and the white man who had lived among the Ojibbways—Tanner. They lead him along the iced river bed to Rainy Lake, then strike straight westward through the snow-padded forests of Minnesota for the swamp lands that drain to Red River near the Boundary. All travel by snowshoes, bivouacking under the stars. Then a dash down Red River by night march on the ice and the Selkirk forces are within striking distance of Fort Douglas by the first week of January, 1817. Wind andweather favor them. A howling blizzard enshrouds earth and air. They go westward to the Assiniboine in the wooded region now known asSt.James and Silver Heights. Here in the woods, hidden by the snowstorm, they construct scaling ladders. On the night of January 10th, the storm is still raging. D’Orsonnens rushes his men across to Fort Douglas. Up with the scaling ladders and over the walls are the De Meurons before the Nor’Westers know they are attacked! As fell Fort William, so falls Fort Douglas without a blow or the loss of a life. J. Ba’tiste learns with joy that his wife, Marie Gaboury, has not been murdered at all but is living safe under old Chief Peguis’ protection across Red River, and the French woman’s amazement may be guessed when there appeared at the hut where Peguis had left her, the wraith of the husband whom she had believed dead for two years. Tanner, the other scout, stays in D’Orsonnens’ service till Selkirk comes.

The dispossessed Nor’Westers scatter to Lake Winnipeg. After them marches D’Orsonnens to Winnipeg River, where Alex McDonell is trying to bribe the Indians to sink Selkirk’s boats when he comes in the spring. The De Meurons capture the post at Winnipeg River, and send coureurs to recall the scattered colonists. Alex McDonell escapes to the interior.

All the while, from June 19th to January 19th, the colonists had been wandering like the children of Israel in a wilderness of woes. When they had been driven to Lake Winnipeg by the massacre, they had begged Mr. Bird of the Saskatchewan to forward them to Hudson Bay, whence they could take ship for England, but Bird pointed out there was no boat coming to the bay in 1816 large enough to carry two hundred people. To go to the bay for the winter would be to risk death from starvation. Better winter on the good hunting and fishing grounds of Lake Winnipeg. It was well the majority took his advice, for the Company ships this year were locked in the bay by the ice. Cameron, the Northwest prisoner, and Colin Robertson, his inveterate enemy, were both ice-bound at Moose. The few settlers who pushed forward to the bay like the widow McLean, wife of the murdered settler, passed a winter of semi-starvation at the forts.

Bird set the colonists fishing for the winter, and they erected huts at Jack River. Here, then, came De Meuron soldiers in the spring of 1817, to lead the wandering colonists back to Red River; and to Red River came Selkirk by way of Minnesota in the summer. For the first time the nobleman now saw the Promised Land to which he had blazed a trail of suffering and sacrifice and blood and devotionfor Earth’s Dispossessed of all the world! D’Orsonnens had given out a few packs of seed, grain and potatoes to each settler. Rude little thatch-roofed cabins had been knocked together with furniture extemporized of trees and stumps. Round each cabin there swayed in the yellow July light to the rippling prairie wind, tiny checker-board patches of wheat and barley and oats, first fruits of infinite sacrifice, of infinite suffering, of infinite despair—type for all time, sacrificial and sacred, of the Pioneer! For the first time Selkirk now saw the rolling prairie land, the rolling prairie world, the seas of unpeopled, fenceless, limitless fields, free as air, broad as ocean! To these prairie lands had he blazed the Trail. Was it worth while—the suffering on that Trail, the ignominy he was yet to suffer for that Trail? Did Selkirk foresee where that Trail was to lead; how the multitudinous feet of Life’s Lost, Earth’s Dispossessed, would trample along that Trail to New Life, New Hope, New Freedom? Faith in God, confidence in high destiny, had been to the children of Israel through their wilderness, a cloud of shade by day, a pillar of fire by night. Had Selkirk the comfort of the same vision, confidence of the same high destiny for his people? I cannot answer that. From the despairing tone of his letters, I fear not. All we know is that like all other great leaders he mademistakes, and the consequences of those mistakes hounded him to his death.

In August, he gathered the people round him on the spot whereSt.John’s Cathedral now stands. He shook hands with each and learned from each his tale of suffering. To each he gave one hundred acres of land free of all charges, as compensation for their hardships. Then he gave them two more lots. “This lot on which we stand, shall be for your church,” he said. “That lot south of the creek shall be for your school; and in memory of your native parish, this place shall be called Kildonan.” To render the title of the colonists’ land doubly secure, Selkirk had assembled the Swampy Crees and Saulteaux on July 18th and made treaty with them for Red River on condition of a quit-rent of one hundred pounds of tobacco. To Lajimoniere, the scout, Selkirk assigned land in the modernSt.Boniface, that brought to Marie Gaboury’s children, and her children’s children, untold wealth in the town lots of a later day. Tanner, the stolen white boy, Selkirk tried to recompense by advertising for his relatives in American papers. A brother in Ohio answered the advertisement and came to Red River to meet the long lost boy. The restoration was fraught with just such disaster as usually attends the sudden transplanting of any wild thing. Tanner, the whiteboy, had become Tanner the grown Indian. He left his Indian wife and married a Christian girl of Detroit. The union was agony to them both. Tanner was a man at war in his own nature—neither white man nor Indian. In a quarrel at the Sault some years later, he was accused of shooting a man and fled from arrest to the swamps. When spring came, his skeleton was found. He had either suicided in despair, or wounded himself by accident and perished of starvation in the swamp. Many years afterwards the confession of a renegade soldier in Texas cleared Tanner’s reputation of all guilt. The soldier himself had committed the murder, and poor Tanner had fled from the terrors of laws he did not understand like a hunted Ishmaelite to the wilderness. To-day, some of his descendants are among the foremost settlers of Minnesota.

In May, 1817, Royal Proclamation had commanded both companies to desist from disorders and restore each other’s property. William Bachelor Coltman and Major Fletcher came as Royal Commissioners to restore order and take evidence. Fort William passed back to the Nor’Westers and a new Gibraltar arose on the banks of the Assiniboine. Urgent interests called Selkirk East. Trials were pending in Upper and Lower Canada against bothcompanies for the disorders. With Tanner as guide to the Mississippi, Selkirk evaded the plots of the Nor’Westers by going south toSt.Louis, east to New York, and north to Canada.

Volumes have been written and heads cracked and reputations broken on the justice or injustice of the famous trials between the Nor’Westers and Hudson’s Bay. Robertson, the Hudson’s Bay man, was to be tried for seizing Gibraltar. The Nor’Westers were charged with being accomplices to the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk was sued for the imprisonment of Daniel MacKenzie and the resistance offered to the Canadian sheriff at Fort William. In every case except the two civil actions against Selkirk, the verdict was “not guilty.” Whether the judges were bribed by the Nor’Westers as the Hudson’s Bay charged, or the juries were “unduly influenced” by Selkirk’s passionate address and pamphlets, as the Nor’Westers declared—I do not purpose discussing here. Selkirk was sentenced to pay £1,500 for imprisoning Daniel MacKenzie and £500 for resisting the sheriff. As for the verdicts, I do not see how a Canadian court could have given a verdict favorable to the Hudson’s Bay, without repudiating rights of Canadian possession; or a verdict favorable to the Nor’Westers, without repudiating the laws of the British Empire. The truth is—the old royal charterhad created a condition of dual authority that was responsible for all the train of disasters. It was unofficially conveyed to the leaders of both companies by the British Government that if they could see their way to union, it would remove the necessity of the British Government determining which company possessed the alleged rights.

As for Selkirk’s fines, they were paid jointly by the Hudson’s Bay Company and himself. William Williams, a swashbuckler military man, is appointed at £1,000 a year to succeed Semple and force the trade so that the Nor’Westers will be compelled to sue for union and accept what terms are offered. More men are to be sent up from Montreal to capture Athabasca. The Rev. John West is appointed clergyman of Red River in 1819, at £100 a year. Annuities of £50 each are granted for life to Semple’s two sisters. Pensions are granted the widows of settlers killed at Seven Oaks—to the widows McLean, Donovan, Coan and two others. Oman Norquay, forbear of Premier Norquay of modern Manitoba, is permitted to quit the Company service and join the colony. So are the Gunn brothers and the Bannermans, and the Mathesons, and the Isbisters, and the Inksters, and the Hardisties, and the Spencers, and the Fletts, and the Birds. Selkirk has gone to France for his health, harried and wearyof the thankless strife. On November 8, 1820, he dies. The same year, passes away his great opponent in trade and aim—Sir Alexander MacKenzie, in Scotland. The year that these two famous leaders and rivals died, there was born in Scotland the next great leader of the next great era in the West, the nation building era that was to succeed the pioneering—Donald Smith, to become famous as Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal.

Notes to Chapter XXVIII.—The data for this chapter are gathered from so many sources, it is almost impossible to give except in a bibliographical list. Every book or pamphlet written on this era I possess in my library and consulted, and I may add—ignored, for the reason that all are so absurdly partisan, either a rabid defense of the H. B. C. making no mention of the faults of the English, or a rabid attack on the H. B. C. giving not a jot of the most damning evidence against the N. W. C.While consultingallsecondary authorities on this chapter, I have relied solely on the confidential reports to the British Government which I obtained from the Records Office by special permission of the Colonial Secretary. These include Sherbrooke’s report to Bathurst, Coltman’s confidential summary to Sherbrooke, the letters which the N. W. C. showered upon the Home Government, the memorials with letters appended which the H. B. C. filed. From these sources I got the letters from which all direct quotations are made, such, for instance, as the plan to assassinate Selkirk, which tells against the Nor’Westers; or the trickery with Daniel MacKenzie, which tells against Selkirk. Nor have I quoted the worst of these letters; for instance, the details where Alex McDonell plans the death of Selkirk. Alex McDonell must not be taken too seriously as representing the Nor’Westers’ sentiment, for from the time his brother Eneas was killed by a H. B. C. man, Alex McDonell was no longer sane on the subject. He was a Highlander gone mad with revenge. Nor have I quoted the evidence of an H. B. C. man about the N. W. C. partners walking over the field of Seven Oaks cracking jokes about the mangled bodies of the slain. The witnesses who gave such evidence wereignorant men with inflamed minds, and in addition—I am sorry to add—liars! In the first place, the bodies had been buried before the partners arrived. In the second, though the wolves tore the bodies up, Dr. McLoughlin and Simon Fraser were not the kind of men to exult ghoulishly over the scalped corpses of dead white men. It shows the absurd lengths to which fanaticism had run when such testimony was credited, and is of a piece with that other vulgar slander that the N. W. C. intended to turn the Half-breeds loose among the women and children.It may be objected that “trickery” is too strong a term regarding the treatment of old Daniel MacKenzie, especially in view of the fact he himself was avowedly unreliable. The evidence must speak for itself. MacKenzie had been induced to write letters to the wintering partners advising them to turn things over to Selkirk. When his name was signed, MacDonell undertook to change the letter. Here is one with MacDonell’s changes in brackets:To Roderick MacKenzieFort William on Lake Superior. Sept. 1816.Dear Roderick(Sir):By a canoe that returned (to the interior) from near the Mountain Portage, you must have heard the events that has taken place here. Mr. McGillivray and all the partners including myself, were made prisoners. All the gentlemen are sent down prisoners to take their trial at York as aiding, abetting and instigating the murder, the dreadful massacre. The N. W. C. is ruined beyond a hope. (The packs here will not go down nor will goods be permitted to enter the interior, the Red River being declared in a state of rebellion.) The massacre that has taken place on Red River is the (principal) cause of all this. Lord Selkirk may (perhaps) soften matters in your favor provided you will (make your submission to him in time and) honestly own all that you know about the instigators of this horrid affair. I have his Lordship’s command to tell you so (I have heard as much, though not direct from his Lordship) and I would advise you as your own and the friend of your deceased father to (come forward immediately with some proposal to save yourself) submit to his Lordship’s pleasure. You should also explain to these deluded half breeds (young men whom you may see and the unfortunate half breeds who were guilty of such extremities) that it was the ambition of others that rendered us all miserable. That is the real truth. (I am happy to learn that you endeavored to save Gov. Semple’s life. This is much in your favor.... The only advice I have to give is to submit, etc.)I have some thirty pages of transcripts on the Athabasca Campaign this year of 1816. Space does not permit the full story of the first campaign. The second campaign, Colin Robertson tells in the next chapter. I have also omitted the story of Keveney’s murder. It is not an integral part of the struggle. Keveney had been Selkirk’s recruiting agent in Ireland, and was hurrying from Albany to join Selkirk at Red River in September, 1816. He proved a very brute to his men, lying in state while they toiled at the oar, then at night sticking a bayonet in any poor guard who chanced to fall asleep on duty. His men deserted him. Keveney was captured by the N. W. C. on Winnipeg River and treated as a gentleman among the officers. This treatment he abused by trying to escape. The N. W. C. then handcuffed him, but what were they to do with him? They did not want him in Red River as a spy, and Selkirk held Fort William. They ordered an Indian and a paid soldier (de Reinhard) to take him out in a boat and kill him on the way up Winnipeg River. The Indian shot him. Reinhard finished the murder by running a sword through his body. This sort of high-handed ruffianism should be remembered when considering Selkirk’s course at Fort William. Reinhard was carried prisoner to Montreal for this, but there was no conviction.The exact number of soldiers employed by Selkirk is given as one hundred and forty. The other sixty men were voyageurs.I have purposely omitted the name of another McDonell in this chapter—namely the man who succeeded Governor Semple as commander of Fort Douglas for two days before the surrender. There are so many McDonells in this chapter and all related that I have avoided mentioning any but the main actors. All of these who survived the fights finally retired to live in Glengarry on the Ottawa and in Cornwall. One may guess with so many members of the fiery clan on opposing sides, how old age arguments must have waxed hot. The McDonells of Toronto are kin of this clan. Governor Semple’s successor was known as “grasshopper McDonell.”Many writers state no colonists were killed at Seven Oaks. Nevertheless, five widows were pensioned, one poor widow on condition she could prove her claim, as another woman claimed the pension of the deceased settler.Semple had been employed only a year when he met death. Yet the company pensioned his two sisters for life, though the H. B. C. was on the verge of bankruptcy. Semple’s father left Philadelphia for London when the Revolutionary War broke out.The N. W. C. say that Selkirk meant from the first to attack Fort William. This is nonsense. The letters sent by Lajimoniere warned Robertson to prepare for him in Minnesota. The letter was stopped by the N. W. C. and found by Selkirk in a secret press at Fort William. Did the Nor’Westers intend to attack Fort Douglas? They say not, but between attacking a fort and starving it out is not wide difference.In most of the evidence it is shown that Boucher ordered Semple in French, Semple answering in English. I have given it all in English.A full account of Seven Oaks will be found in the novel, “Lords of the North,” with free rendering of Pierre’s song. The fate of the Deschamps will be found in “The Story of the Trapper.”Coltman’s official report is marvelously impartial, considering he had formerly been an agent for the H. B. C. Major Fletcher did not count. Tradition and private letters of Sherbrooke relate that the major was scarcely sober during the journey of investigation.Full account of Tanner’s life will be found in the Minnesota Hist. Society’s Collections. Tanner was the son of a clergyman on the Ohio. He was stolen by wandering Shawnees when barely eight years old, and sold to a woman chieftain of the Ottawas at the Sault. Here at an early age he married a native girl. When his brother found him at Red River, Tanner was averse to going back to civilization: He hated the white man clothes, which his brother induced him to wear, and appeared at Mackinac a grotesque figure with coat sleeves and trouser legs foreshortened. The Wisconsin Society’s Historical Collection contains an account of him at this period. At Mackinac, his squaw wife, of whom he was very fond, refused to go on with him to the white man’s land, and she remained at Mackinac. Poor Tanner’s stay in civilization was short. He came back to the Sault with a white wife. The man, of whose death he was accused, was the brother of Henry Schoolcraft at the Sault. The quarrel was over attentions to a young daughter of Tanner’s. As stated in the main story, a blackguard soldier, not Tanner, was the real murderer.

While consultingallsecondary authorities on this chapter, I have relied solely on the confidential reports to the British Government which I obtained from the Records Office by special permission of the Colonial Secretary. These include Sherbrooke’s report to Bathurst, Coltman’s confidential summary to Sherbrooke, the letters which the N. W. C. showered upon the Home Government, the memorials with letters appended which the H. B. C. filed. From these sources I got the letters from which all direct quotations are made, such, for instance, as the plan to assassinate Selkirk, which tells against the Nor’Westers; or the trickery with Daniel MacKenzie, which tells against Selkirk. Nor have I quoted the worst of these letters; for instance, the details where Alex McDonell plans the death of Selkirk. Alex McDonell must not be taken too seriously as representing the Nor’Westers’ sentiment, for from the time his brother Eneas was killed by a H. B. C. man, Alex McDonell was no longer sane on the subject. He was a Highlander gone mad with revenge. Nor have I quoted the evidence of an H. B. C. man about the N. W. C. partners walking over the field of Seven Oaks cracking jokes about the mangled bodies of the slain. The witnesses who gave such evidence wereignorant men with inflamed minds, and in addition—I am sorry to add—liars! In the first place, the bodies had been buried before the partners arrived. In the second, though the wolves tore the bodies up, Dr. McLoughlin and Simon Fraser were not the kind of men to exult ghoulishly over the scalped corpses of dead white men. It shows the absurd lengths to which fanaticism had run when such testimony was credited, and is of a piece with that other vulgar slander that the N. W. C. intended to turn the Half-breeds loose among the women and children.

It may be objected that “trickery” is too strong a term regarding the treatment of old Daniel MacKenzie, especially in view of the fact he himself was avowedly unreliable. The evidence must speak for itself. MacKenzie had been induced to write letters to the wintering partners advising them to turn things over to Selkirk. When his name was signed, MacDonell undertook to change the letter. Here is one with MacDonell’s changes in brackets:

To Roderick MacKenzie

Fort William on Lake Superior. Sept. 1816.

Dear Roderick(Sir):

By a canoe that returned (to the interior) from near the Mountain Portage, you must have heard the events that has taken place here. Mr. McGillivray and all the partners including myself, were made prisoners. All the gentlemen are sent down prisoners to take their trial at York as aiding, abetting and instigating the murder, the dreadful massacre. The N. W. C. is ruined beyond a hope. (The packs here will not go down nor will goods be permitted to enter the interior, the Red River being declared in a state of rebellion.) The massacre that has taken place on Red River is the (principal) cause of all this. Lord Selkirk may (perhaps) soften matters in your favor provided you will (make your submission to him in time and) honestly own all that you know about the instigators of this horrid affair. I have his Lordship’s command to tell you so (I have heard as much, though not direct from his Lordship) and I would advise you as your own and the friend of your deceased father to (come forward immediately with some proposal to save yourself) submit to his Lordship’s pleasure. You should also explain to these deluded half breeds (young men whom you may see and the unfortunate half breeds who were guilty of such extremities) that it was the ambition of others that rendered us all miserable. That is the real truth. (I am happy to learn that you endeavored to save Gov. Semple’s life. This is much in your favor.... The only advice I have to give is to submit, etc.)

I have some thirty pages of transcripts on the Athabasca Campaign this year of 1816. Space does not permit the full story of the first campaign. The second campaign, Colin Robertson tells in the next chapter. I have also omitted the story of Keveney’s murder. It is not an integral part of the struggle. Keveney had been Selkirk’s recruiting agent in Ireland, and was hurrying from Albany to join Selkirk at Red River in September, 1816. He proved a very brute to his men, lying in state while they toiled at the oar, then at night sticking a bayonet in any poor guard who chanced to fall asleep on duty. His men deserted him. Keveney was captured by the N. W. C. on Winnipeg River and treated as a gentleman among the officers. This treatment he abused by trying to escape. The N. W. C. then handcuffed him, but what were they to do with him? They did not want him in Red River as a spy, and Selkirk held Fort William. They ordered an Indian and a paid soldier (de Reinhard) to take him out in a boat and kill him on the way up Winnipeg River. The Indian shot him. Reinhard finished the murder by running a sword through his body. This sort of high-handed ruffianism should be remembered when considering Selkirk’s course at Fort William. Reinhard was carried prisoner to Montreal for this, but there was no conviction.

The exact number of soldiers employed by Selkirk is given as one hundred and forty. The other sixty men were voyageurs.

I have purposely omitted the name of another McDonell in this chapter—namely the man who succeeded Governor Semple as commander of Fort Douglas for two days before the surrender. There are so many McDonells in this chapter and all related that I have avoided mentioning any but the main actors. All of these who survived the fights finally retired to live in Glengarry on the Ottawa and in Cornwall. One may guess with so many members of the fiery clan on opposing sides, how old age arguments must have waxed hot. The McDonells of Toronto are kin of this clan. Governor Semple’s successor was known as “grasshopper McDonell.”

Many writers state no colonists were killed at Seven Oaks. Nevertheless, five widows were pensioned, one poor widow on condition she could prove her claim, as another woman claimed the pension of the deceased settler.

Semple had been employed only a year when he met death. Yet the company pensioned his two sisters for life, though the H. B. C. was on the verge of bankruptcy. Semple’s father left Philadelphia for London when the Revolutionary War broke out.

The N. W. C. say that Selkirk meant from the first to attack Fort William. This is nonsense. The letters sent by Lajimoniere warned Robertson to prepare for him in Minnesota. The letter was stopped by the N. W. C. and found by Selkirk in a secret press at Fort William. Did the Nor’Westers intend to attack Fort Douglas? They say not, but between attacking a fort and starving it out is not wide difference.

In most of the evidence it is shown that Boucher ordered Semple in French, Semple answering in English. I have given it all in English.

A full account of Seven Oaks will be found in the novel, “Lords of the North,” with free rendering of Pierre’s song. The fate of the Deschamps will be found in “The Story of the Trapper.”

Coltman’s official report is marvelously impartial, considering he had formerly been an agent for the H. B. C. Major Fletcher did not count. Tradition and private letters of Sherbrooke relate that the major was scarcely sober during the journey of investigation.

Full account of Tanner’s life will be found in the Minnesota Hist. Society’s Collections. Tanner was the son of a clergyman on the Ohio. He was stolen by wandering Shawnees when barely eight years old, and sold to a woman chieftain of the Ottawas at the Sault. Here at an early age he married a native girl. When his brother found him at Red River, Tanner was averse to going back to civilization: He hated the white man clothes, which his brother induced him to wear, and appeared at Mackinac a grotesque figure with coat sleeves and trouser legs foreshortened. The Wisconsin Society’s Historical Collection contains an account of him at this period. At Mackinac, his squaw wife, of whom he was very fond, refused to go on with him to the white man’s land, and she remained at Mackinac. Poor Tanner’s stay in civilization was short. He came back to the Sault with a white wife. The man, of whose death he was accused, was the brother of Henry Schoolcraft at the Sault. The quarrel was over attentions to a young daughter of Tanner’s. As stated in the main story, a blackguard soldier, not Tanner, was the real murderer.

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