The Nor’-Westers at their meeting, July, 1814, under Honorable William McGillivray, after whom Fort William was named, decided to oppose the Colony and sent two of their most aggressive men to meet force with force, and to give Miles Macdonell, the new Dictator, either by arms or by craft, the reward for his tyranny, as they regarded it.

The whole body of the traders were incensed against Lord Selkirk, for had not one of the chief Nor’-Wester partners written two years before from London saying, “Lord Selkirk must be driven to abandon his project, for his success would strike at the very existence of our trade.”

The two men chosen at the gathering in Grand Portage were well fitted for their work.  Most forward was Alexander Macdonell.  On his journey writing to a friend he said:  “Much is expected of us....  So here is at them with all my heart and energy.”  But the master-mind was his companion Duncan Cameron who, as a leader, stands out in the conflicts of the times as a determined man, of great executive ability, but of fierce and over-bearing disposition.  The Nor’-Westers, having planned bloodshed, all agreed that Duncan Cameron was well chosen.  He had been a leading explorer and trader in the Lake Superior district and knew the fur traders’ route as few others did.  His well-nigh thirty years of service made him a man of outstanding influence in the Company.  Moreover, he could be bland and jovial.  He had the Celtic adroitness.  He knew how to ingratiate himself with every class and possessed all the devices of an envoy.  His appearance and dress at Red River were notable.  Having had some rank as a U.E.  Loyalist leader in the war of 1812, he came to the Forks dressed in a scarlet military coat with all the accoutrements of a Captain in the Army.  He even made display of his Captain’s Commission by posting it at the gate of Fort Gibraltar.  Of the Fort itself he took possession as Bourgeois or master and laid his plans in August, 1814, for the destruction of the Selkirk Colony.  Cameron then began a systematic course of ingratiating himself with the Colonists.  Speaking, as he did the Gaelic language, he appealed with much success to his countrymen.  He represented himself as their friend and stirred up the people of Red River against Selkirk tyranny.  He pictured to them their wrongs, the broken promises of the founder, and the undesirability of remaining in the Colony.  He brought the settlers freely to his table, treating them openly to the beverage of their native country, and completely captured the hearts of a number of them.  Those, friends of his, he made use of to carry out his deep plans.  On the very day of the issue of the rations, he induced some of the Colonists to demand the nine small cannon in the Colony store houses.  The request was refused by Archibald Macdonald, the acting Governor.  The settlers then went forward, broke open the store houses and removed the cannon.  Macdonald now arrested the leading settler, who had taken the field