Compendium history and biography of North Dakota; a history of early settlement, political history, and biography; reminiscences of pioneer life, Part 9

Author:
Publication date: 1900
Publisher: Chicago, G.A.Ogle
Number of Pages: 1432

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FUR TRADERS.

Washington Irving, speaking of the French fur trading merchant, at the various posts, in those primitive days in Canada, says he "was a kind of commercial patriarch. With the lax habits and easy familiarity of his race, he had a little world of self- indulgence and misrule around him. He had his clerks, canoemen and retainers of all kinds, who lived with him on terms of perfect sociability, al- ways calling him by his christian name. He had his harem of Indian beauties, and his troop of lialf-breed children. Nor was there ever wanting a louting train of Indians hanging around the es- tablishment, eating and drinking at his expense, in the intervals of their hunting expeditions."

The Canadians had for a long time a trouble- some competition in the British merchants of New

York who enticed away the Indian hunters and coureur des bois, and traded with them on more favorable terms. A still more formidable oppo- sition was organized in the Hudson's Bay Fur Com- pany, chartered by Charles II in 1670, with the ex- clusive privilege of establishing trading posts on the bay of that name and its tributary rivers. This is a privilege they retained for two centuries at least. In 1766, after the subsidence of the com- mercial disturbance which had grown out of the cession of Canada to England, fur traders began to push out into the wilderness. One Thomas Curry, we are told, established a trading post in the valley of the Saskatchewan and shortly after, influenced by his success, a rival, James Finley, set up a similar post in the same valley, some fifty miles further up the river. The trade in furs soon regained its old channels, but was pursued with such avidity and emulation by individual merchants that it soon transcended to its former limits. The trade was injured by their artifices to outbid and undermine each other. The Indians were de- bauched by the sale of spirituous liquors, which had been prohibited under French rule. Scenes of drunkenness, brutality and brawl were the conse- quence in the Indian villages and around the trad- ing posts; while bloody feuds took place between rival trading parties when they met in the course of their business in the wild land.

To put an end to these sordid and ruinous con- tentions several of the principal merchants of Mon- treal formed, in the winter of 1783, a company to carry on the business. This was augmented by the absorption of a rival company in 1787. And thus was born the famous North West Company, that formidable rival to the Hudson's Bay Company. Besides these there sprang up other fur companies, both in Canada and in the United States.

For many years previous to the arrival of per- manent settlers within the boundaries of what now constitutes the growing state of North Dakota the voyageurs and employes of the various fur companies ranged through its wilds and traded with the various Indian tribes on the Missouri, the Red and other rivers. These hardy men penetrated to all parts of the Dakotas, except the Black Hills, and explored it mile by mile.

About the year 1808-10, Don Manuel Lisa, a Spanish gentleman established a trading post on the upper Missouri, for the Missouri Fur Company, of St. Louis. Other posts were built in various parts of the territory by the same company in the

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few succeeding years. Posts, also, were established at numerous points by the other companies.

EARLY SETTLEMENT.

We are told by William H. Keating, the his- torian, of Major Long's expedition, that vis- ited in the neighborhood of Fort Pembina, in 1823, that at that point lived a French trader who had settled there about 1780-81. If that is the fact, and there is no reason to doubt it, this old Frenchman was the first known settler in North Dakota. His name is not given, unfortunately, by the narrator.

THE SELKIRK SETTLERS.

In 1811, Thomas Doulgas, Earl of Selkirk, Scotland, obtained a grant of land from the Hud- son's Bay Company, for the purpose of planting a colony of his fellow countrymen in that then wilder- ness. He was a wealthy, kind-hearted and philan- thropic, but visionary, nobleman, and the principal idea he had was to benefit the poorer class of Scotch- men, evicted crofters and others, by removing them to a more congenial place, where they could improve their condition. He wrote several tracts for the purpose of urging the importance of colonizing Brit- ish emigrants in these distant British possessions to check their disposition to emigrate to the United States. The tract of land obtained by Earl Sel- kirk is thus described in the deed, altering the an- tique and obsolete spelling.

"Beginning on the western shore of Lake Win- ipie, at a point in fifty-two degrees and thirty sec- onds north latitude and thence running due west to the Lake Winnipigashish, otherwise called Little Winipie, thence in a southerly direction through the said lake, so as to strike its western shore in latitude fifty degrees, thence dute west to the place where the parallel fifty-two degrees intersects the western branch of Red river, otherwise called the Assiniboine river, thence due south from that point of intersection to the height of land which separates the waters running into Hudson's Bay from those of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, thence in an easterly direction along the height of land to the source of the river Winipie, meaning by such last named river the principal branch of the waters which unite in the Lake Saginagas, thence along the main streams of those waters, and the middle of the several lakes through which they pass, to the mouth of the Winipie river, and thence in a northerly

direction through the middle of Lake Winipie, to the place of beginning, which territory is called Ossi- niboia."

In the fall of 1812 the pioneers of this settlement, a small party, arrived at about the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red river of the North, and com- menced the erection of houses for themselves and for the expected colonists. The jealousy of the em- ployes of the Northwest Company was aroused. They saw in the coming of permanent settlers the downfall of the fur trader, and upon themselves the restraints of law and order to which they were total strangers. Disguised as Indians, they drove off the settlers and induced them to go on to Pembina. The lawless coureur des bois, voyageurs, bois brules and other employes of the fur company, threatened dire disaster if they were not obeyed, and the af- frighted colonists acceded. Says the Rev. Edward D. Neill, in history of Minnesota, in speaking of this event :

"These men agreed to carry the children, but the men and women were obliged to walk. The exac- tions of the guides were cruel. One Highlander had to relinquish a gun that had been carried by his father at the battle of Culloden, and which was prized next to the family Bible, and a shrinking woman had to part with her marriage ring which had been placed upon her finger in the bloons of her youth, by a devoted lover in the Highlands. For the sake of creating alarm, the guides would run off with the babes and children, and the distracted mothers refused to be comforted, because their chil- dren were not to be seen any more as they supposed. This sport, more worthy of bears than of men, so shocked the nervous systems of the more delicate that they never recovered, and found an early grave."

On their arrival at Pembina, which was a trading post, a fort having been built there by Lord Selkirk, that same year, they found but little accommodations, .and the most hardy were compelled to pass the win- ter in tents. In the spring they returned to their colony, north, and resumed their interrupted labors. They toiled all the spring and summer in the culti- vation of their land, but their toil was unrewarded, the birds carrying off most of the harvest. The now disheartened settlers had to return to Pembina where they passed the winter of 1813-14. They were but unsophisticated hunters, the game they could get but little, and they almost starved. In the . September of 1815, the colonists numbered about two hundred. The settlement upon the lower Red river near what is now the city of Winnipeg, they

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called Kildonan, in memory of the parish from which so many of them came in far away, beloved Scot- land. Augmented numbers, however, gave them increased confidence. Houses were built, a mill erected, and imported cattle and sheep began to graze the prairie. A frugal and industrious race, they toiled to rear their homes amid the wilderness, and to cultivate the soil. Here the hardy Scot, ac- customed to the rocks and crags of his native heath, was pleased to find that

"Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer. Smoothly the plowshare runs through the soil, as a keel through the water.

Here, too, numberless herds run wild and unclaimed on the prairies:

Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, and forests of timber,

With a few blows of the axe, are hewn and framed into houses."

All this time the agents and employes of the Northwest Company looked with considerable dis- trust and suspicion upon the growing settlement, even going so far as to try to stir up the savages against the innocent settlers. Things grew from bad to worse. A detailed history of these unhappy settlers, their trials and tribulations, seems fitting in this place, for though the greater part of the settle- ments lay north of what is now the international boundary line, still their history is linked with that of Minnesota and North Dakota to a great extent, and around Fort Pembina was gathered a part of these people who were the first to make a settlement upon the Red river of the North, for the purpose of tilling the soil and the raising of cattle.

At a meeting of the partners in the Northwest Company, held at Fort William, at the head of Lake Superior, in the summer of 1814, Duncan Cameron and Alex. McDonnell were authorized to concoct some scheme to stop the progress of the col- ony and to destroy it entirely. Accordingly, the two emissaries named, both energetic but unscrupu- lous men, arrived in August, at the Northwest Con- pany's post, within half a mile of the settlers' vil- lage of Kildonan, at the forks of Assiniboine and Red river of the North. Cameron, a Scotchman himself, soon ingratiated himself with the High- landers. He spoke their Gaelic tongue, he was from their native land, he extended hospitality to their family and he gained the confidence of many. He hinted, rather than spoke, disparagingly of Earl Sel- kirk and his plans, and with devilish cunning sowed the seeds of distrust and enmity among the simple

colonists. To more thoroughly impose upon the credulous Scotch, he wore a suit of regimentals, once the uniform of a now disbanded company of voy- ageurs, of which he now signed himself as captain and commanding officer. By fair promises and specious lies, he drew off some of the colonists, who moved elsewhere, and unsettled the minds of many others. The Canadians and the employes of the company perceiving that the colonists were not in the favor of their employers, grew insolent and ag- gressive. One Sunday at the conclusion of relig- ious services, one George Campbell, a disaffected Selkirker (as they were called), read a command from Captain Cameron, demanding the surrender of all the field pieces in the possession of the colo- nists. The following day, employes of the company, not receiving the guns, broke open the storehouse and took therefrom nine pieces of light artillery, mostly brass guns. Many disaffected settlers now left the colony, some casting in their lot with the Northwest Company. The Earl of Selkirk relates, in a statement made of these matters, that, in the spring of 1815, Morrison and Mckenzie, members of the Northwest Company, told Kawtawabetay,

chief of the Ojibways or Chippewas, at a meeting at Sandy lake, that they would give him and his people all the rum and other goods they had at Fort William, Leach lake and Sandy lake, if they would go on the war path against the Selkirk settlers. The chief, with a manhood which they lacked, turned from them in disgust. .

June II, which was Sunday, in the morning, a mob of the employes of the company and other ruf- fian hangers on, ambushed themselves in a grove near the governor's house and commenced an at- tack. Four settlers were wounded, one mortally. Taking the governor, Miles McDonnell, prisoner, he was sent to Montreal. Not satisfied with this, the employes, now under the leadership of Alexan- der McDonnell, commenced a new campaign against the peaceful settlers, seizing their horses and cattle, and devastating their farms. He even went so far as to construct a battery of two guns over against the settlement. Crushed by this treatment, dis- pirited and dejected, the poor colonists signified their desire to quit, and sent word to the head of the Northwest Company that they would leave their farms and go away.

On a beautiful day in the latter part of the lovely month of June, two of the Ojibway chiefs, attended by some forty grim warriors, appeared upon the scene, and offered to escort the persecuted colonists,

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their wives, children and property to Lake Winni- peg. Guarded jealously from the assaults of their foes by these taciturn braves, the settlers again de- parted from their homes, like the Acadian farmers of Grand Pre, of whom Longfellow said they set out "friendless, hopeless, homeless."

After they had embarked on the batteaux pro- vided for them, they looked back in sorrow and pain, and beheld the flame and smoke that, started by in- cendiary torch, was destroying their mill and the houses they had builded. But it was not long, when in their asylum on the north end of Lake Win- nipeg, they were visited by Colin Robertson, a prin- cipal character in the Hudson's Bay Company, who offered to lead them back to their farms and homes from which they had been so unceremoniously and cruelly ejected. This they accepted, and returned under his leadership, and their number was consid- erably augmented by some fresh arrivals from "bon- nie Scotland." During the winter the majority of them remained at Fort Pembina, and hunted the buffalo on the prairies of northern Minnesota and Dakota. Early in the spring of 1816 they returned to Kildonan. In the meantime, the good Earl of Selkirk, hearing of the distress of his colony, crossed the ocean, but on his arrival in New York, in the autumn of 1815, heard how they had been driven from their homes. He proceeded at once to Mon- treal, where he found some of his colonists, who had been seduced by the people of the Northwest Com- pany, in great indigence and neglect. While in that city he received the information that Robertson had taken his people back to their homes, and that they had again settled down to develop the land. He im- mediately sent back, by Laguimoniere, the courier who had brought the news, the word of his arriva: in this country, and to announce his coming in the early spring. The messenger never reached his destination with the message. Near Fond du Lac, Minnesota, one night he was waylaid, beaten, robbed of his dispatches and his canoe, and taken prisoner. An Ojibway chief, in June, 1816, testified at Sandy lake, that a trader named Grant, offered him two kegs of rum and considerable tobacco if he would send some of his men and capture the bearer of dis- patches to the Red river. Shortly after this the messenger Laguimoniere was brought in prisoner by a negro and some Indians of the Ottawa tribe.

In the spring of 1816, Duncan Cameron, on his return to the scene of his former persecution of in- nocent settlers, was placed under arrest, by Colin Robertson, and taken north to the shores of

Hudson's Bay for shipment to London, to stand trial.

Not being able to procure military aid of the British government in Canada, Lord Selkirk hired four officers and eighty privates of the discharged Meuron regiment, twenty of the DeWatteville reg- iment and several members of the Glengary Fen- cibles, all of whom had served in the late war with the United States. His contract with these men was that they were to receive monthly wages for navi- gating the boats to the Red river settlement, to have lands given them if they wished to stay there of a free passage home if they desired to return. On reaching the Sault Ste. Marie, he learned that once more his colony had been broken up by the lawless fur traders.

It seems that in the spring of 1816, Governor Robert Semple, an amiable, but injudicious and tact- less man, who was governor of the factories and ter- ritories of the Hudson's Bay Company, came to the Red river. In April he sent one Pambrun to a trading post in a neighboring river, and as that party was returning with five boats, a quantity of furs and pemmican, they were attacked and captured May 12, by an armed party of the friends and employes of the Northwest Company. They said this was in re- taliation for an attack made by Colin Robertson on their fort at at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red rivers the previous fall. The lawless element in all the wide country began to flock to the head- quarters of both of the rival fur companies.

On the 18th of June, 1816, a party of "North- westers" left Fort Qui Appele, under the command of Cuthbert Grant, Lacerpe, Frazer, Hooley and Thos. McKay. These marched toward Red river. Warned by friendly Indians of the approach of a hostile force, vigilant watch was kept for the arri- val of the advancing enemy. June 19, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, the lookouts announced the appearance of a body of mounted men. With a spy glass the governor discovered that the party son- sisted of sixty or seventy horsemen. With a reck- less disregard of the commonest dictates of caution or prudence, he proceeded to sally out of the fort with twenty men and met them. About half a mile on his road he met some of the settlers hurrying to the fort. These reported that the approaching party were armed with artillery. The governor sent back to the fort for a field piece. Without waiting for it however, he pressed on, and was soon surrounded. One Boucher, the reckless, drunken son of a Mont- real innkeeper, was put forward as spokesman by

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the hostiles. Semple inquired what they wanted. Boucher insolently answered, "Why did you destroy our fort, rascal?" With more courage than pru- dence, the governor grasped the bridle of Bouclier's horse as he exclaimed, "Scoundrel, do you talk thus to me?" Boucher sprang from his horse and the party that was with him immediately commenced firing. Semple was soon wounded, and called to his followers to disperse and take care of themselves and leave him to his fate. Instead they gathered round their fallen chief. As they did this a volley from the Northwest party killed nearly all of them. The rest asked for quarter but this was denied and the rest were murdered with the exception of four or five. One of those thus spared, John Pritchard, has narrated the story of these murders by these ruth- less demi-savages. He says that, "the knife, axe or ball put an end to the existence of the wounded, and on the bodies of the dead were practiced all those horrible barbarities, which characterize the inhuman heart of the savages. The amiable and mild Mr. Semple, with broken thigh, lying on his side, sup- porting his head upon his hand, said to Grant, the leader of the attacking party, 'I am not mortally wounded, and if you could get me conveyed to the fort, I think I should live.' Grant promised he would do so, and immediately left him in care of a Canadian who afterwards told that an Indian of their party came up and shot Mr. Semple in the breast. I en- treated Grant to procure me the watch or even the seals of Mr. Semple, for transmitting them to his friends, but I did not succeed. Our force amounted to twenty-eight persons, of whom twenty-one were killed." Schoolcraft, writing in 1832, says he saw at Leech lake, Majegabowi, and Ojibway, who was said to have been the identical Indian who shot Sem- ple as he lay wounded on the ground.

The morning after this massacre Grant and his followers insisted on the abandonment of the fort and settlement. Next day the colonists, to the num- ber of some two hundred embarked in boats to be taken to the coast. Other murders occurred about this time growing out of the feud between the rival fur companies. In all this strife and bitterness it seems it was the Selkirkers who were the principal sufferers.

Previous to receiving the news of the murder of Governor Semple, the Earl of Selkirk had made his plans to go to his colony by way of Fond du Lac, St. Louis river, and Red lake. He now changed his mind. He went to Fort William, the chief trading post of the Northwest Company, on Lake Superior,

and arrested the principal partners and forwarded them to the attorney general of Canada.

After this stroke of justice Lord Selkirk pur- sued his journey as intended, and spent the summer of 1817 with his colony. The harvest that year was luxuriant, but owing to their troubles the set- tlers had sown but little, and when the winter came on they began to be pinched for food. Unsuited as they were to the rough life of settlers, hardy but unsophisticated in the ways of the wilderness, these people suffered to an untold degree, and were hun- gered and famished where the Indian or Canadian reveled in every luxury in the meat or game line. It became necessary for the settlers to support themselves through the long winter by hunting. They proceeded into the open prairies of northern Minnesota to join a camp of Indian and half- breed hunters. Being unprovided with snow shoes, they plunged on through the ever-deepening snow, suffering all kinds of martyrdom and misery. On Christmas eve, 1817, these half starved colonists, in rags, worn out by their exertions, and without a crumb of food among them, reached the camp they sought.

While on his visit to the colony Lord Selkirk had made a treaty with the Crees and Saulteaux Indians, July 18, 1817, by which he acquired title to land on both sides of the Red river of the North, extending as far south as the Great Forks (now Grand Forks). Part of this strip was only four miles wide, in others, especially around Fort Doug- las and Fort Daer ( Pembina), it was twelve. After remaining for awhile Lord Selkirk departed, at- tended by three or four persons, by way of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, going to St. Louis, Missouri, and from thence home.

The American officials upon the frontier, as a general thing, looked, also, upon this colonization scheme of the Earl of Selkirk's with jealousy and distrust. The following letter, written by the In- dian agent at Prairie du Chien, in February, 1818, to the governor of Illinois, illustrates the feeling at that time rife in the far northwest. It is quoted from the History of the Minnesota Valley, pub- lished in 1882. After opening his letter, the agent, hysterically, writes :

"What do you suppose, sir, has been the result of the passage through my agency of this Britislı nobleman? Two entire bands, and part of a third, all Sioux, have deserted us and joined Dickson, who has distributed to them large quantities of Indian presents, together with flags, medals, etc.

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Knowing this, what must have been my feelings on hearing that his lordship had met with a favora- ble reception at St. Louis. The newspapers an- nouncing his arrival, and general Scottish appear- ance, all tend to discompose me; believing, as I do, that he is plotting with his friend Dickson our destruction-sharpening the savage scalping knife, and colonizing a tract of country so remote as that of the Red river for the purpose, no doubt, of monopolizing the fur and peltry trade of this river, the Missouri and their waters, a trade of the first importance to our western states and territories. A courier who had arrived a few days since con- firms the belief that Dickson is endeavoring to undo what I have done, and secure to the British gov- ernment the affection of the Sioux and subject the Northwest Company to his Lordship."

The spring of 1818 at last dawned, and the colonists again plucked up heart and began to put in the crops. They watched, with eagerness, the development of the tender plants, and in joyous anticipation awaited the harvest time. Their hopes were again blasted, this time not by the hand of man, but by that scourge that, in later times, has repeated the work of devastation, the grass- hopper. Let us quote once more from Dr. Neill, who says :

"One afternoon, just as the harvest was ripe, and they were about to put in the sickle, 'behold the Lord formed grasshoppers, in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth,' and their joy was turned to mourning. The air was filled with these insects; 'the earth did quake before them, like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains, or like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble,' was the sound of their move. ments." When the next morning arose, 'it was a day of darkness and of gloominess ; a day of clouds and thick darkness,' and strong men were bowed down; and like the Hebrew captives, 'by the waters of Babylon, they lifted up their voices and wept.'"

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Compendium history and biography of North Dakota; a history of early settlement, political history, and biography; reminiscences of pioneer life, Part 9

Author: Publication date: 1900 Publisher: Chicago, G.A.Ogle Number of Pages: 1432

Author:
Publication date: 1900
Publisher: Chicago, G.A.Ogle
Number of Pages: 1432