CHAPTER XVII.

The oligarchy.

The struggle has always been between the masses and the classes.  Privilege always strives to confine itself to a few.  It could not be but that the echoes of the great British Reform Bill of 1832 should reach even the remote banks of Red River.  The struggle for constitutional freedom was also going on in Upper Canada, as well as in Lower Canada where the French-Canadians were fighting bitterly for their rights.  Besides all this in the Red River Settlement the existence of a Company store—­a monopoly—­could never prove satisfactory to a community of British blood.  Had the Colony shop been ever so justly and honestly conducted it could not be popular, how much less so must it have been in the hands of Alexander Macdonell, the peculator and deceiver.

It is true the Company store, of which we speak, was not that of the Hudson’s Bay Company proper, but rather the possession of Lord Selkirk’s heirs.

Gradually the rulership was coming under the direction of Governor Simpson, though there was the local Governor who was nominally independent.

Even when Governor Simpson was invoked, it is to be remembered that he and his company were the embodiment of privilege.  But the Governor was a surprisingly shrewd man.  He saw the aspiration after freedom, of both Scottish and French Settlers.  True, gaunt poverty did not stalk along the banks of Red River as it had done in the first ten years of the Colony, but just because the people were becoming better housed, better clad, and better fed, were they becoming more independent.  The unwillingness to be controlled was showing itself very distinctly among the French half-breeds as they grew in numbers and dashed over the prairies on their fiery steeds.  They were hunters, accustomed to the use of firearms and were, therefore, difficult to restrain.

The Governor’s policy clearly defined in his own mind became, for the next ten years, the policy of the Company.  We have seen that the Governor built Lower Fort Garry, and he regarded this as his residence, nearly twenty miles down the river from the Forks, which was the centre of French influence.  Even before doing this in 1831 he had, in the year preceding this, as Ross tells us, built a small powder magazine at Upper Fort Garry, and it goes without saying that rulers do not build powder magazines for the purpose of ornament.

In 1834, as we learn from Hon. Donald Gunn, who was then a resident of Red River Settlement, and who has left us his views in the manuscript afterward published coming up to 1835, a most serious revolt took place among the Metis.  Gunn’s account is vivid and interesting.

[Illustration:  The Sisters, The Ferry, The Forks, Fort Garry, Site of Fort Gibraltar, Pontoon Bridge, French Half-breeds with Ox-carts, Red and Assiniboine Rivers.  Fort Garry (From Oil painting of Mr. W. Frank Lynn made in 1872, now in possession of the Author.)]