Natural line of trade to the south.

matters, were in the habit of entering Upper Canada from the States, and, in the absence of a clergy, received a cordial welcome. These men were accused of diffusing republican opinions.

Moreover, it should be remembered that the natural channel of trade for Upper Canada was rather with Albany and the American towns rising up along Lake Erie, of which Buffalo was the chief, than with Montreal or Quebec. Many of the United Empire loyalists had entered. the province by way of Albany and western New York while the obstructions caused by the rapids along the St. Lawrence rendered trade with Lower Canada precarious and difficult. In this state of things the position of Great Britain was in many ways more vulnerable in Upper than in Lower Canada, and the determination to make it the first point of attack in the war of 1812 may be justified on political grounds. It is difficult now to realize the greatness of the danger, because it was warded off by the genius and energy of Brock.

AUTHORITIES

The official correspondence between 1792 and 1800 is calendared in Brymner, op. cit. 1891; between 1801 and 1807 in volume for 1892, and between 1808 and 1813 in that for 1893 See also Doughty and McArthur, op. cit.

Brymner, op. cit., on 'Marriage Law in Upper Canada', 1891; on 'Political State of Upper Canada, 1806-7', 1892.

History of the Settlement of Upper Canada, by W. Canniff, Toronto, 1869, deals with the beginnings of that province.

See Kingsford, op. cit. vol. vii, pp. 511-26.
Heriot, G., op. cit.

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING OF MANITOBA

expansion

CANADIAN expansion is like the experience of a traveller Western who, as he pursues his course, finds new vistas opening to the view. In spite of the adventurous spirit of the fur traders and the existence of certain posts in the western country, French Canada had, as we have seen, been circumscribed within the limits of only a portion of the present province of Quebec. The settlement of Upper Canada naturally extended the horizon. The future had in store the colonization of the great area extending to the Pacific, and the first efforts, however feeble, in this direction belong to our present period.

Mackenzie.

In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie, a vigorous Scotchman, who Journeys of was in command of the Athabasca district under the NorthWest Company of Fur Traders, starting from Lake Athabasca, went down two hundred miles along the rapid Great Slave River in a light canoe till he reached the Great Slave Lake. From this he went down the great river which afterwards received his name till he came to the ocean. Within three months of his departure he was back at Lake Athabasca, having discovered one of the four largest rivers of America, and begun the opening out of new regions for the enterprise of Great Britain. In the spring of 1793 Mackenzie set out on a yet more adventurous journey. He had determined to reach the Pacific by crossing the Rocky Mountains. He was without a guide and accompanied only by six Canadian voyageurs and two Indian interpreters. Ascending the Peace River westward to its source, he at first descended a river to the south-west, but afterwards struck north-west by land, reaching

The fur trade.

the Pacific somewhere about the mouth of Simpson's River. He took possession of the country in the name of Canada, inscribing upon the cliffs of the coast the date July 22, 1793.

Great as was the future importance of these discoveries, since the Rocky Mountains had never before been crossed north of Mexico, it was not for many long years that their consequences were realized. In his own time Mackenzie was best known for his connexion with the fur trade. For some years after the Seven Years' War this trade had languished, but by 1766 English adventurers began to follow along the French route, which passed by Michillimackinac, at the junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie to the Grand Portage on the north-west side of Lake Superior. The fur trade with the upper country had always been the staple trade of Canada, and by 1780 it produced an average annual return of about two hundred thousand pounds in furs to Great Britain, and no less than a hundred canoes were employed in it. An outbreak of small-pox among the Assiniboine Indians stopped the trade for two years; but in 1783-4 the merchants engaged in the fur trade, tired of constant conflicts, formed a partnership, which became the famous North-West Company. It was determined at once to proceed to the north, and to erect forts there, so as to divert the trade of the Hudson's Bay Company. Not all the traders, however, had joined the North-West Company, and it was not till after the carrying on of a kind of private war that, in 1787, the rival interests at last came to terms. Forts were erected at regular distances along the route from the Grand Portage to the Great Slave Lake, with the intention of ruining the fur trade of the Hudson's Bay Company. There can be no question that contact with the servants of the North-West Company was the cause of great demoralization among the Indians. In these remote districts men of naturally wild disposition, released from the trammels of civilization, acted with no fear of God or man before their

eyes. After eleven years of peace, rivalry again broke out, and in 1805 an offshoot of the Company known as the X.Y. Company entered the lists.

...

colonization

It was into this den of lawlessness and private war that Selkirk's Lord Selkirk, a Scottish landowner who sympathized with scheme. the sufferings of Scottish crofters, ventured to thrust a party of peaceful colonists; and from these difficult beginnings was to spring the future province of Manitoba. As early as 1802 he had predicted the future of the country. At the western extremity of Canada,' he wrote to Lord Pelham, 'upon the waters which fall into Lake Winnipeg . . . is a country which the Indian traders represent as fertile and of a climate far more temperate than the shores of the Atlantic under the same parallel.' Having failed in his efforts to interest the British Government in his scheme for colonizing the north-west, Selkirk next sought to effect his purpose by means of the Hudson's Bay Company. A legal opinion was obtained from Romilly and other eminent counsel, which advised that the Hudson's Bay Company could confer rights of ownership on holders of lands acquired from them. The next step was to secure a large amount of stock in the Hudson's Bay Company; and, although friends of the North-West Company sought to defeat his object by adopting similar methods, Selkirk succeeded in obtaining from the Hudson's Bay Company the grant of some hundred thousand acres, on the condition that he should undertake the whole cost of the proceedings in the way of transport, settlement, and government, and of negotiations with the Indians. The district was named Assiniboia, and included the valley of the Red River and of the Assiniboine.

The first party, consisting of some ninety, for the most part Arrival of first Scottish Highlanders, arrived at York Factory on Hudson's settlers. Bay in the autumn of 1811, and reached the Red River in the following year. Very few colonists were sent out in 1812, but in 1813 another party consisting of about one

Action of hundred arrived at Churchill, reaching Red River in the
North-
West following June. Meanwhile the North-West Company had
Company. not been unobservant. Such a settlement, it was recog-

nized, struck at the root of its monopoly, and was in-
tended as a menace to its interests. At first the relations
of the colonists with the half-breeds who were in the country
were very friendly. The Governor, Miles MacDonell, a
Scotch Catholic, sent a number of colonists, during the first
and second winters, down to Pembina, some seventy miles
south of Fort Douglas; where they lived on excellent terms
with Canadians, half-breeds, and Indians.

Outbreak A Proclamation, issued by MacDonell in January, 1814, of hostilities, gave the excuse for active opposition. By this he forbade the export of any provisions from the district claimed in the name of Lord Selkirk, under pain of the forfeiture of such provisions. At first an arrangement was made under which the agents of the North-West Company were allowed to export provisions on the undertaking that they would supply equal quantities at a later date, if necessary; but this arrangement was not sanctioned by the Company. The plan had been formed to inveigle away as many of the Red River settlers as possible, and then to hound the Indians against the weakened settlers. When MacDonell found that, through the action of the North-West Company, his Proclamation remained without effect, he entered upon a policy of reprisals, sending an expedition to take by force the provisions stored at Fort La Souris, about one hundred and fifty miles from Fort Douglas, on the Souris River. The North-West Company determined upon revenge. Fort Gibraltar, in the neighbourhood of Fort Douglas, was occupied by Duncan Cameron a confidential servant of the Company. Alexander MacDonell, who was in charge of Fort Qu'Appelle, wrote in August 1814, 'you see me and our mutual friend Cameron about to commence open warfare with the Red River enemy. . . . There are those who will only be satisfied with