History of Grand Forks County : with special reference to the first ten years of Grand Forks City, including an historical outline of the Red River Valley

• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: State Historical Society of North Dakota
• Subjects: Grand Forks; Hudson; Hudson Bay; Luke; Sutherland
• Online Access: http://cdm16921.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ndsl-books/id/38970

P 11 E - S K T T L F, SI K N T A N N A L S 17 them to be a great improvement on the means of transportation previously in use, but two years later he says in his journal that the introduction of horses and carts into tlie country had the tendency of making the employees of the company more lazy and shiftless than before. In 1S0G Captain Henry visited the country about the Mouse and upper Missouri rivers. He speaks of Pembina affairs again in 1808, when, besides the annual shipment of peltries, there was exported from the country 3,159 pounds of maple sugar. That year the Rocky mountain locust made one of their periodical visits and swarmed over the country. Captain Henry came to an untimely end. Having gone west of tlie Rocky mountains, to which region the Northwest company had extended their oper- ■ ations, lie was drowned in the Columbia river, May 28, 1814. THE SELKIRK COLONY'. From the beginning of the century the Red River Valley began to be occupied and traversed by the trappers and voyageurs of the fur companies, and soon afterward by a few independent traders. But a different class of people now came to the valley. These were the Selkirk colonists and their coming is the next important matter in valley history after the operations of Capt. Henry. This coloily was composed of High landers'who had been evicted from the estate of the Duchess of Sutherland, in the north of Scotland. Says Warren Upham: "The first immigration of white men to colonize the fertile basin of the Red River of the North, bringing the civilized arts and agriculture of Europe, was in the years 1812 to 1816, when, under Lord Selkirk's farsighted and patriotic, supervision, the early pioneers of tlie Selkirk settlements, coming by way of Hudson bay and Vork Factory, reached Manitoba and established their homes along the river from tlie vicinity of Winnipeg to Pembina. In its beginning this colony experienced many hardships, but, in the words of one of these immigrants, whose narrative was written down in his old age, in 1881, 'by and by our troubles ended, war and famine and flood and poverty all passed away, and now we think there is no such [dace to be found as the valley of Red,.river,'"* In 1811, Thomas Douglas, earl of Selkirk, having gained control of the Hudson Bay Fur Company interests so far as to enable him to do so, secured a tract of 11(5,000 acre?, of land in the Red River Valley on which'he designed to plant his prospective colony. Its first contingent|arrived in 1812. The lands on which they settled included the site of the city of Winnipeg which was founded about sixty years later. About the year 1814 tbe locusts *Th'e Glacial Luke Agassiz, p. Hi'.!. Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.