PREFACE

The present work tells the romantic story of the Settlement of Lord Selkirk’s Colonists in Manitoba, and is appropriate and timely in view of the Centennial celebration of this event which will be held in Winnipeg in 1912.

The author was the first, in his earlier books, to take a stand for justice to be done to Lord Selkirk as a Colonizer, and he has had the pleasure of seeing the current of all reliable history turned in Lord Selkirk’s favor.

Dr. Doughty, the popular Archivist at Ottawa, has put at the author’s disposal a large amount of Lord Selkirk’s correspondence lately received by him, so that many new, interesting facts about the Settlers’ coming are now published for the first time.

If we are to celebrate the Selkirk Centennial intelligently, it is essential to know the facts of the trials, oppressions and heartless persecutions through which the Settlers’ passed, to learn what shameful treatment Lord Selkirk received from his enemies, and to trace the rise from misery to comfort of the people of the Colony.

The story is chiefly confined to Red River Settlement as it existed—­a unique community, which in 1870 became the present Province of Manitoba.  It is a sympathetic study of what one writer has called—­“Britain’s One Utopia.”

The Romantic Settlement

OF

Lord Selkirk’s Colonists

* * * * *

Lord Selkirk’s Colonists

CHAPTER I.

The earlier people.

A Patriarch’s story.

This is the City of Winnipeg.  Its growth has been wonderful.  It is the highwater mark of Canadian enterprise.  Its chief thoroughfare, with asphalt pavement, as it runs southward and approaches the Assiniboine River, has a broad street diverging at right angles from it to the West.  This is Broadway, a most commodious avenue with four boulevards neatly kept, and four lines of fine young Elm trees.  It represents to us “Unter den Linden” of Berlin, the German Capital.

The wide business thoroughfare Main Street, where it reaches the Assiniboine River, looks out upon a stream, so called from the wild Assiniboine tribe whose northern limit it was, and whose name implies the “Sioux” of the Stony Lake.  The Assiniboine River is as large as the Tiber at Rome, and the color of the water justifies its being compared with the “Yellow Tiber.”

The Assiniboine falls into the Red River, a larger stream, also with tawny-colored water.  The point of union of these two rivers was long ago called by the French voyageurs “Les Fourches,” which we have translated into “The Forks.”

One morning nearly forty years ago, the writer wandered eastward toward Red River, from Main Street, down what is now called Lombard Street.  Here not far from the bank of the Red River, stood a wooden house, then of the better class, but now left far behind by the brick and stone and steel structures of modern Winnipeg.