real warfare between the Bay and the North West companies, where their rivalry was the sharpest and the most vindictive in its hostilities.

as the scene was from the Bay posts, the North West Company, with its traffic to Canada by its own route of travel, had strongly possessed itself here by its own posts, as a region for most lucrative traffic. Of course, these emigrant Highlanders were regarded as intruders of the most unwelcome and offensive sort, coming to break in upon the wilderness with the stir and noise and restraints of civilization. In a pitched fight on June 19, 1816, Governor Semple, the local governor of the Bay Company, with nearly a score of his supporters, were killed by the defiant forces of the North West Company. The sanguinary strife continued with increasing bitterness till 1820. Then a negotiation was instituted by Mr. Ellice, before referred to, which resulted in the union of the two companies in 1821, on equal terms. The proprietary rights of the chartered company seem to have been offset by the energetic enterprise of the Northwesters. No more European emigrants were sent to Lord Selkirk's settlement after his death in Switzerland in 1820.

As this colonial enterprise of Lord Selkirk, known afterwards as the Red River Settlement, became so important and so troublesome an element in the affairs of the Bay Company, - opening, indeed, the controversy which closed only with the extinction of the company, a few more particulars concerning it will be here in place. The founder of the colony was said to have had a religious object in view. It was not his intention that the colony should grow and be reinforced by further emigrants from Europe. Having been started by a sufficient body, equipped as agriculturists and mechanics, it was intended that retired servants of the Bay Company, half-breeds and converted and, so to speak, civilized savages, should find there a common and congenial residence, making a sort of oasis in the desert for a happy family. It proved a distressing caricature of such a fancy. In 1817 Selkirk obtained a deed of the territory from the chiefs of the Salteaux and Cree tribes, the consideration being the annual payment of one hundred pounds of tobacco. The Crees at once and ever after denied that the Salteaux had any rights in the terri

Selkirk

Kirkcudbright
October Jeven

1808*

*After a cut in Bryce's Manitoba.

tory.1 So here was trouble from the old proprietors. Selkirk, being in Canada at the time of the bloody assault by the employés of the North West Company, in which Governor Semple and twenty of his party were killed, came with a military force by Fort William and partially restored order. For the first twelve years Selkirk managed the affairs of his colony, with lavish outlays and renewed enterprise, against multiplied discouragements. The undertaking was said to have brought his estate under a charge of £85,000. After his death, for about twelve more years, his executors nominally had the colony in charge. But the company really acted for them till, in 1838, it recovered the territory by full purchase.

Probably there was never presented on the face of the earth a stranger medley, nor a more heterogeneous combination of the elements of humanity, than in the Red River Settlement. Planted seven hundred miles away from sea-water, and that mostly bound in ice, it was wholly isolated from the world. Its natural outlet for trade, if such it should ever have,and it could not prosper without it, was through the region now Minnesota, in the United States, whose people the Bay Company was resolute to exclude. A whole year was necessary for an answer to an order from Europe. Humanity was represented in the territory by English, French, Scotch, Swiss, and Indian, and before long by the inevitable Yankee. But few of these were permanent settlers, who cast in their lot for fixed residence. Nominally land was free to desirable occupants. But there proved to be annoying conditions imposed by the company; and humanity shaded off into many tints and colors, through English half-breeds and French half-breeds, and their progeny through generation after generation, in many variations. For religion, there was a free choice between paganism, the Roman and the English churches, Scotch Presbyterianism, Wesleyanism, etc. The magnates of the place were the retired servants of the company, with their Indian families, comfortable, sure of the otium, tenacious of the dignitas.

The propitious coalition of the two companies gave the now strengthened proprietors under the old charter spirit to apply for, and influence to obtain, through Parliament, what was called an additional grant. It was obtained in the same year as that which ratified the coalition of the two rival companies. This was a grant of the right of "exclusive trade" over the re

1 When the parliamentary committee of inquiry of 1857 was engaged in investigating the affairs of the Bay Company, Penguis, the aged chief of the Salteaux tribe, wrote a letter complaining of the treatment received by him since this negotiation. His statement was fortified by testimonials, which he had received from Lord Selkirk and Sir George Simpson, of his friendliness, fidelity, and good service. As he was "in the decline of life and poor, Simpson had assured him an annuity for life from the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company of £5 sterling." Penguis charges that the contract with him had

never been fulfilled by Selkirk and his successors, though he had saved Selkirk's life, and that the land deeded had been vastly extended. He adds: "We have many things to complain of against the Hudson's Bay Company. They pay us little for our furs, and when we are old we are left to shift for ourselves. We could name many old men who have starved to death in sight of many of the company's principal forts." "The traders have never done anything but rob and keep us poor, but the farmers have taught us how to farm and raise cattle." (British Documents, Reports of Committees, vol. xv. p. 445.)

gion known as the "Indian Territory." This was an immense expanse of indefinitely bounded and scarcely penetrated wilderness, including the whole northwestern part of the continent, its waters draining into the Arctic and the Pacific. The grant thus made was restricted to such parts of North America as do not form a part of any British province, nor lands of the United States nor of any foreign power. The grant was also limited to a period of twenty-one years. Thus the Hudson Bay Company found itself in possession of two covenants, the latter covering territory now estimated to include 2,764,340 square miles, a trifle larger than that held by the original charter. No reference was made to this instrument, either to confirm,

extend, or even recognize it, in the later grant. The policy of the company. seems to have been to assume that the original charter needed no renewal, not venturing to invite upon it the light of modern legislation.

The most active agent in the negotiation for the union of the Bay and the North West companies was the Hon. Edward Ellice, then of London; his two chief partners being Simon McGillivray, also of London, and William McGillivray, of Montreal. The plea on which the grant of the Indian Territory was first asked of George IV was largely urged on the ground that it would benefit and protect the natives. Governor Pelly laid stress upon the hazardous character of the business, requiring unusual enterprise to meet its risks of heavy losses. The government had been deaf to the appeals of the company for protection covenanted to it by its charter. Its profits have been no more than reasonable, considering its service to the mother country, "by a commerce wrested out of the hands of foreigners,

[Reproduced from an engraving in J. C. Dent's Last Forty Years, ii. 104, after a drawing by the Earl of Dufferin. - ED.]

subjects of Russia and the United States." The papers at the Colonial Office would show that during a long period of years, applications for protection and redress were made by the company without avail. The trouble continued till the rival parties, both nearly exhausted, were united. It was these considerations that first led to the license for exclusive trade in the Indian territories for a limited period of twenty-one years. The act also extended the jurisdiction of the civil and criminal courts of Canada over the chartered and the licensed territories of the company. A degree of tranquillity and of renewed prosperity followed the harmonizing and the legislative measures just rehearsed. The company, however, by thus concentrating and increasing its power, retained in exercise all the monopoliz

ing and other objectionable features of its policy which had stirred hostility to it; and at the same time it was involved in new controversies. Here we may properly close the review of the troubles encountered by the company from rivals disputing its prerogatives, and may turn to another class of its conflicts.

The third series of embarrassments and contentions in which the Bay Company was involved, in being challenged as to the validity of its charter and as to its general policy, is connected with its own halting consent to allow, and then in the obstructions which it put in the way of the prosperity of, a colony planted in a portion of its territory. The inquisition and discussion attending this series of contentions finally resulted in the extinction of the monopoly of the company, and the purchase of its proprie* [Reduced from a cut in Bryce's Manitoba (p. 160), which follows a drawing by Selkirk in 1817.- ED.]

tary by the Canadian government. The struggle was a hard one. The company availed itself of the utmost ingenuity and of legal resources to parry the assaults of its enemies and to retain its profitable and exclusive right of trade. But the time was felt to have come when such far-reaching expanses of territory, containing unknown wealth, should no longer be held simply as a preserve for fur-bearing animals, and that some two or three hundred British subjects, as shareholders in a mercantile company, might appropriate to themselves all the harvestings and the gleanings. In the full and searching inquisition by a parliamentary committee near the close of

the long struggle, we shall have occasion to note how thoroughly the whole process exposed the fact that it was not possible for a permanent settlement to flourish in any portion of the territory controlled by the Bay Company, while it was allowed even the slightest jurisdiction. As its last resource, the company seems to have planted itself upon what, in view of later facts, stands proved as a monstrous fiction, that its territories were wholly unsuitable for settlement. The validity of the charter was brought under question in connection with the grant to Lord Selkirk of territory for a settlement. This was a sub-grant, and its legality was denied by eminent legal

[After a cut in Bryce's Manitoba, showing the position of the early forts in relation to the modern city. There have been five forts within the limits of Winnipeg. (Cf. George Bryce in Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, and in the Canadian People, p. 335.) The first was Fort Rouge, built by Vérandrye about 1736. The second was Fort Gibraltar, built in 1806, after the union of the North West and X Y companies, which was levelled by Semple in 1818. The third was Fort Douglas, built in 1812 by Selkirk, and named after his family. This was later enlarged. The fourth was the first Fort Garry, built in 1822, near the site of Fort Gibraltar, upon the union of the Hudson's Bay and North West companies, which was succeeded by the fifth, the later Fort Garry, built in 1836, a little west of the earlier fort. ED.]