Having made such disposition as we shall see of the people, Governor Macdonell went with a boat’s crew down the river to make a choice of a place of settlement for the Colonists.  A bull and cow and winter wheat had been brought with the party, and these were taken to a spot selected after a three days’ thorough investigation of both banks of the river for some miles below the Forks.  The place found most eligible was “an extensive point of land through which fire had run and destroyed the wood, there being only burnt wood and weeds left.”  This was afterwards called Point Douglas.

He had, as we shall see, dispatched the settlers to their wintering place up the Red River on the 6th of September, and set some half-dozen men, who were to stay at the Forks, to work clearing the ground for sowing winter wheat.  An officer was left with the men to trade with Indians for fish and meat for the support of the workers.

The winter, which is sharp, crisp and decided in all of Rupert’s Land, was approaching, so that their situation began to be desperate.

Governor Macdonell’s chief care was for the safety and comfort during the winter of his helpless Colonists.

Sixty miles up the Red River from the Forks was a settlement of native people—­chiefly French half-breeds—­and to this place called Pembina came in the buffaloes, or if not they were easily reached from this settlement.  But the poor Scottish settlers had no means of transport, and the way seemed long and desolate to them to venture upon, unaccompanied and unhelped.  Governor Macdonell did his best for them, and succeeded in inducing the Saulteaux Indians, who seemed friendly, to guide and protect them as they sought Pembina for winter quarters.

The Indians had a few ponies and mounted on these they undertook to conduct the settlers to their destination.  The caravan was grotesquely comical as it departed southward.  The Indians upon their “Shaganappi ponies,” as they are called, like mounted guards protecting the men, women and children of the Colony who trudged wearily on foot.  The Indians were kind to their charge, but the Redman loves a joke, and often indulges in “horse-play.”  The demure Highlander looked unmoved upon the Indian pranks.  The Indians also hold everything they possess on a loose tenure.  The Highlander who was forced to surrender the gun, which his father had carried at the battle of Culloden, failed to see the humour of the affair, and the Highland woman who was compelled to give up her gold marriage ring, because some prairie brave wanted it, was unable to see the ethics of the Saulteaux guide who robbed her.  The women became very weary of their journey, but their mounted guardians only laughed, because they were in the habit on their long marches of treating their own squaws in the same manner.