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Updated: June 8, 2025
On August 12 the second section of the contingent arrived with the experienced campaigners. From the moment they raised their tents Lord Selkirk began to show a bold front against the Nor'westers. Captain D'Orsonnens was entrusted on the day of his arrival with a letter from Selkirk to William M'Gillivray, the most prominent partner at Fort William.
Now he complained vigorously of his treatment since leaving Scotland, and was in favour of accepting the terms which Cameron, as a partner in the North-West Company, offered. As many colonists as desired it, said Cameron, would be transported by the Nor'westers free of charge to Montreal or other parts of Canada.
His secretary, John Spencer, was ordered to go to the Souris in the capacity of a sheriff, accompanied by a strong guard and carrying a warrant in his pocket. When Spencer drew near the stockades of the Nor'westers' fort and found the gate closed against him, he commanded his men to batter it in with their hatchets.
On being questioned, Katawabetay told of his refusal the year before to join the Nor'westers in an attack on the Red River Colony; he also declared that an attempt had been made during the previous spring by a trader named Grant to have some of his young Chippewas waylay Lord Selkirk's messenger, Laguimonière, near Fond du Lac.
Many of the settlers brought to the east were indignant at the treatment they had received at the hands of the Nor'westers and were prepared to testify against them. In this way he hoped to accumulate a mass of evidence which should strengthen his plea for military assistance from the Canadian government. Among those whom Selkirk met in Montreal was Miles Macdonell.
There was much disappointment among the Nor'westers when they learned that Colin Robertson was not in the colony. Cuthbert Grant vowed that Robertson would have been scalped had he been captured.
In the presence of this odd company Governor Macdonell read the Earl of Selkirk's patent to Assiniboia. About him was drawn up a guard of honour, and overhead the British ensign fluttered in the breeze. Six small swivel-guns, which had been brought with the colonists, belched forth a salute to mark the occasion. The Nor'westers were visibly impressed by this show of authority and power.
His cares as a herder, vacheur, vaché, he called it, were wherever his slender-horned herds might roam or his stallions lead their mares in search of the sweetest herbage; and when rains filled the maraises, and the cold nor'westers blew from Texas and the sod was spongy with much water, and he went out for feathered game, the numberless mallards, black ducks, gray ducks, teal with sometimes the canvas-back and the poules-d'eau the water-hens and the rails, and the cache-cache the snipe were as likely to settle or rise just before his own house as elsewhere, and the most devastating shot that hurtled through those feathered multitudes was that sent by her husband hers her own possessive case belonging to her.
Hard by this was the Nor'westers' trading-post, called Fort Qu'Appelle. Pambrun remarks upon the great number of half-breeds who had gathered at the North-West Company's depot. Many of them had come from a great distance. Some were from the upper Saskatchewan; others were from Cumberland House, situated near the mouth of the same river.
Their object was to tell Lord Selkirk's party that settlers were not wanted on the Red River; that it was the country of the fur traders, and that settlers must go farther afield. This was surely an inhospitable reception, after a long and fatiguing journey. Plainly the Nor'westers were at it again, trying now to frighten the colonists away, as they had tried before to keep them from coming.
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