John George Selkirk

“ These new settlers were not all Germans, but had among them a number of Swiss and Piedmontese. The regiments had been employed by Britain in the war of 1812-15, and were disbanded in Montreal at its close. Lord Selkirk engaged four officers and one hundred men to go to Red River. The men were promised certain wages, as well as land grants at Red River. In the autumn of 1816 the party arrived at Fort William, which they seized and the camping place on the Kaministiquia River is still called Point De Meuron. ”

“ This officer had a brother in the North-West Fur Company, John Macdonell, who, more than ten years before, had been in the service of his Company on Red River and whose Journal had no doubt fallen into the hands of his brother Miles. He had written: "From the Forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers the plains are quite near the banks, and so extensive that a man may travel to the Rocky Mountains without passing a wood, a mile long. The soil on the Red River and the Assiniboine is generally a good soil, susceptible of culture, and capable of bearing rich crops." ”

“ The "Highland clearances" have left a stain on the escutcheons of more than one nobleman. Lord Selkirk, whose estates were in the south of Scotland, and who had no special connection with [Pg 55] the Celts, nevertheless took pity on the helpless Highland exiles. Ships were prepared, and the following are the numbers of Highland colonists sent out in the respective years:
The names of these settlers were those still well known in Manitoba, as Sutherland, McKay, McLeod, McPherson, Matheson, Macdonald, Livingstone, Polson, McBeth, Bannerman, and Gunn. ”

“ John's Church, afterward the Cathedral Church, and referring to the discontent of the Selkirk settlers, with which he had small sympathy, "We have got into the new church, which is really a splendid edifice for Red River, and the people are less clamorous about a Gaelic minister than they were." The good Governor had his pleas [Pg 299] ant fling at the claim made by the Highlanders to have their private stills when he says, "And about whiskey they say not one word, now that rum is so cheap, and good strong 'heavy wet' in general use." ”

“ Hillier, Priest Bourke, Doctor Edwards, and Messrs. John McLeod, Whitford and Michael Macdonell, officers and clerks. Those Immigrants who took no part in the rebellion fared well. True, the scurvy seized several of them, but proved harmless to those who obeyed the orders and took plentiful potations of spruce beer. With the opening year a fair supply of fresh and dried venison was supplied by the Indians. In April upwards of thirty deer were snared or shot by the settlers. ”

“ Ste. Anne's, 304. St. Charles, Fort, massacre, 86. St. James, Fort, outbreak, 398. St. John's College, 421. St. Pierre, Legardeur de, 89. Sargeant, Governor, 52. Saskatchewan River discovered, 89. Saulteaux Indians, 431. Sault Ste. Marie, 310. Sayer "rising," 441. Schoolcraft, H. R., Explorer, 332. " " discovers Lake Itasca, 333. Schultz, Dr., rescued, 444. Scoresby, Capt. W., 313. Scott, Thomas, executed, 467. Selkirk, Earl of, 202. " " purchases H.B.C. stock, 206. Selkirk, Earl of, on Emigration, 205. " " Colony to Prince Edward Island, 205. Selkirk, Earl of, colony to Red River, 208-213. ”

“ On his right, where the land declines, he sees little valleys linked together with charming undulations; but on the mountains at his left, in the valleys at his right, among the hills in the distance, his eye vainly seeks the vestige of a human habitation.
He sets out in search of one. The boat from which he landed has deposited on the shore his effects—his arms, his nautical instruments, his charts, a Bible, and provisions of various kinds. Notwithstanding his piratical sentiments, the captain of the Swordfish has not designed to precede exile by confiscation. Selkirk takes his gun, his gourd ”

“ He comprehends then what an error he has committed in the complete destruction of the wild cats which peopled the island. With the most generous intentions, how often is man mistaken in the object he pursues! We think we are ridding us of an enemy, and we are depriving ourselves of a protector. God only knows what he does, and he has admitted apparent evil, as a principle, into the admirable composition of his universe; he suffers the wicked to live. Selkirk had been more severe than God, and he repents it. ”

“ Lord Selkirk's dream is fulfilled, for his land is fast becoming the grainary of the world. As the traveller of to-day passes along the railways in the last days of August or early in September, he beholds the sight of a life-time, in the rattling reapers, each drawn by four great horses, turning off the golden sheaves of wheat and other cereals. A little later the giant threshers, driven by steam power, pour forth the precious grain, which is hurried off to the high elevators for storage, till the railways can carry it to the markets of the world to feed earth's hungry millions. ”

“ Selkirk hastens to transport thither his hatchets, his guns, his seal-skins and goat-skins, his Bible, his spy-glass, his pipes, his ladder, his stools, even his traps; all his riches! it is a complete removal.
On taking possession of the island, he had engraved on the bark of several trees the date of his arrival; he now inscribes upon them the day of his departure. For many months his reckoning has been interrupted; to determine the date is impossible; he knows only the day of the week. ”

“ This was nearly three-quarters of a century before the first Selkirk Colonists reached Red River. The French Captain saw only a few Indian teepees at the Forks, and ascended the Assiniboine. It was a very dry year, and the water in the Assiniboine was so low that it was with difficulty he managed to pull over the St. James rapids, and reached where Portage la Prairie now stands, and sixty miles from the site of Winnipeg claimed the country for his Royal Master. ”

“ Pale, bent double, with his hair standing upright, clinging to some projection of his barque, he in vain attempts to fix his glance on certain strange objects which he sees ascending, descending, and rolling around him.
They are the trunks of the trees which formed a part of his raft, limbs detached from its body, and which, now drawn into the same whirlpool, are by their repeated shocks, aiding in his complete destruction.
In face of this imminent, implacable death, Selkirk ceases to struggle against it. He has now but one resource; the belief in another life. ”

“ Three days after the despatch of this letter, Commissioner Coltman arrived at Red River. He immediately grappled with the difficulties and met them with much success. The news of Lord Selkirk's actions had all arrived at Montreal through the North-West sources, so that both in Quebec and London a strong prejudice had sprung up against his Lordship. Colonel Coltman found, however, that Lord Selkirk had been much misrepresented. The illegal seizures he had made at Fort William were dictated only by prudence in dealing with what he considered a daring and treacherous enemy. ”

“ The influence of the Nor'-Westers in Montreal was so great that the U.E. Loyalists of Upper Canada sympathised with them against the noble philanthropist. Justice was undoubtedly perverted in Upper Canada in the150 most shameless way. Weak in body at the best, Lord Selkirk by his misfortunes, losses and legal persecution began to fail in health. With the sense of having been unjustly defeated, and anxious about his Colonists in Red River, he returned with his family to Britain to his beloved St. ”

“ Suddenly, and without any known cause, he became poor, closed his business and lived a life of seclusion. At last, he disappeared and no one seemed to know with certainty whither he had gone.
I found various rumors respecting him. One person said he had gone to the Island of Juan Fernandes, and now lived there alone as Alexander Selkirk had done before him. I was told by another that he had become a friar, and lived as a hermit near the foot of one of the snow-capped mountains of the Andes. ”

“ When the Napoleonic wars were at their height, like a true patriot, Lord Selkirk wrote a small work on the "System of National Defence," anticipating the Volunteer System of the present day. But his keen mind sought lines of activity as well as of theory. Seeing his fellow-countrymen, as well as their Irish neighbors, in distress and also desiring to keep them under the British flag, he planned at his own expense to carry out the Colonists to America. ”

“ The tongue of detraction is seldom at rest. It has often been repeated that De Foe had surreptitiously appropriated the papers of Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch mariner, who having lived solitary on the [77] isle of Juan Fernandez, four years and four months, was relieved on the 2nd of February, 1708-9, by captain Woodes Rogers, in his cruising voyage round the world. But let no one draw inferences till the fact be first ascertained. The adventures of Selkirk had been thrown into the air, in 1712, for literary hawks to devour [86] ”

“ In territory, resources, and influence the opening up of the West is making Canada complete. And, if so, we owe it to Lord Selkirk and to Selkirk Settlers, who stood true to their flag and nationality. Very willingly will we observe the Selkirk Centennial in 1912. "Many a time and oft" it looked in their case to be one long, continued and alarming drama, but on the 30th day of August, the day of their landing on the banks of the Red River, shall we recite the epic of Lord Selkirk's Colonists, and it will be of the temper of Browning's couplet:
God's in His Heaven,
All's right with the world. ”

“ He hesitates—thrice returning to his first resolution, he brings the gun to his forehead; thrice he removes it. At last, to drive away this demon of suicide, he fires it in the air.
Scarcely has he thus uselessly thrown away this precious shot before he repents. He approaches the shore; it is at the moment when the tide is at its lowest ebb; the sun touches the horizon. Selkirk lies down on the damp beach:—'When the wave returns,' said he, 'if it be God's will, let it take me!'
Slumber comes first. Exhausted with emotion, yielding to the lassitude of his mind, he falls asleep. ”

“ They were always a religious people. No one can even estimate what their religious disposition did in a 314 miscellaneous gathering of people who had, being scattered over the posts of the fur traders, been in most cases, without any religious opportunities whatever, before their coming to settle on Red River. The sturdy stand for principle which the Selkirk Colonists made created an atmosphere which has remained until this day. ”

“ Born in 1771, Selkirk came to his title in 1779, and in 1807 married the daughter of James Colville, one of the heaviest shareholders in the Hudson’s Bay Company. All that life could give the young nobleman possessed, wealth, position, love, power. ”

“ One family still found on Red River banks, gains celebrity as possessing the first white woman who came to Rupert's Land. With her husband she had gone to Edmonton in ——, and had wandered over the prairies. In 1811, with her husband, she first saw the Forks of Red River and wintered in 1811-12 at Pembina, the winter which the first band of Colonists spent at York Factory. Lajimoniere became a fast adherent of Lord Selkirk, and made a famous and most dangerous winter journey through the wilds alone, carrying letters from Red River to Montreal, delivered them personally to Lord Selkirk in 1815. ”

“ He was a distinctly high-class man, though Masson's estimate is probably true—"A man not very conciliatory, it is true, but intelligent, honorable and a man of integrity." He was an author of some note, but as it proved, too good or too inexperienced a man for the lawless region to which he was sent.
It would have been almost useless to despatch a new Governor to the Red River settlement unless there had also been obtained a number of settlers to fill the place of those so skillfully led away by Duncan Cameron. Lord Selkirk now secured the best band of Emigrants attainable. ”

“ He occasionally amused himself by cutting upon the trees his name, and the date when he was left on the island, and at times added to the first the period of his continuance; so averse is man to be utterly forgotten by his fellow-man. Perishable as the material was upon which he wrought, still the idea was pleasing to his lonely mind, that when he should have ended his lonely life, some future navigator would learn from these rude memorials, Alexander Selkirk had lived and died upon the island. ”

“ Lord Selkirk hastened on to Montreal, but it was too late in the season, being about the end of October, to penetrate to the interior.
He must winter in Montreal. He was here in the very midst of the enemy. With energy, characteristic of the man, he brought the matter of protection of his colony urgently before the Government of Lower Canada. In a British colony surely the rights of property of a British subject would be protected, and surely the safety of hundreds of loyal people could not be trifled with. ”

“ The very sun in the sky seemed alien to them, for the Highland drizzle was seen no more. The days were bright, the weather warm, the nights cool, and there was an occasional August thunderstorm, or hailstorm which alarmed them. The traders, the Indians, the half-breed trappers, and runners were all new to them. Their Gaelic language, which they claimed as that of Eden, was of little value to them except where an occasional company-ser82vant chanced to be a countryman of their own. They were without money, they were dependent upon Lord Selkirk's agents for shelter and rations. ”

“ Lord Selkirk's Colonists never had, as have seen, a bed of roses. Adversity had dodged their steps from the time that they put the first foot forward toward the new world—and Stornoway, Fort Churchill, York Factory, Norway House, Pembina and Fort Douglas start, as we speak of them, a train of bitter memories. Flood and famine, attack and bloodshed, toil and anxiety were the constant atmosphere, in which for a generation they existed. Higher civilization is impossible when the struggle for shelter and bread is too strenuous. ”