136 GEOEGE BEYCE ON THE 



I'ort at the mouth of Wiuuipeg River. Half-way up Red River is a fort called " Pointe du 

 Bois," some seventy-five or eighty miles south of the United States boundary line. At the 

 mouth of the Assiuiboine, where stood the Red Fort, there is marked a fort with the dis- 

 appointing addition, " abandoned," showing that it could only have been occupied one year. 



(2.) A map found in the Department of Marine, Paris, professing to be made after 

 sketches by de la Verandrye. and claiming to be of date about 1740, gives Fort Rouge at 

 the mouth of the Assiniboilles and on the south side of it. The direction of the Assiui- 

 boine is not quite accurate. (See Plate I. Map 1.) 



(3.) Another map in Paris supplies a little further information. It is a " Map of the 

 new discoveries in the west of Canada, prepared from the descriptions of M. de 

 la Verandrye, and given to the Depot of Marine, Paris, by M. de la Galissoniere, 1150." 

 In this map on the north side of the Riv. des Assiniboilles (sic) is given Fort de la Reine, 

 where Portage la Prairie now stands. The lake is marked '" Vnipigon." We again notice 

 on the site of Fort Rouge, a fort marked and described as " Ancien Fort," fifteen or seven- 

 teen years having sufficed to give it its antiquity. In this map the direction of the Assi- 

 uiboine is properly given. (See Plate I. Map 2.) 



(4.) Thomas Jeffreys, Geographer to His Majesty of England, in a map and description 

 in 17G2, speaks of Fort Maurepas (on Lake Winnipeg) and Fort de la Reine (on the Assiui- 

 boine), and states that another fort Avas built on Rivière Rouge, but was deserted on 

 account of its vicinity to the two named. 



(5.) Another manuscrii^t mai> in the Department of Marine, Paris, and bearing date 

 1750, figures a Fort Rouge on the Assiuiboine at its mouth. In this map the direction of 

 the Assiuiboine is, again, somewhat wrong. 



Of Fort Rouge no vestige now remains. The site of it must now, from the falling 

 in of the banks of the Red and Assiuiboine Rivers, be under water. A few years ago 

 the writer ascertained from one of Lord Selkirk's colonists, who saw the locality in 

 1812, that there was not then a trace remaining of the Red Fort of seventy or eighty 

 years before. Though the south bank of the Assiuiboine at the point is now treeless, 

 this informant says it was in 1812 fairly wooded. Undoubtedly the Red Fort, built in 

 haste, and so soon to be abandoned, was little more than a rudely constructed log en- 

 closure, erected on the clearing made just large enough to supply the material for its 

 construction. 



After the British conquest of Canada there is a break in the history of the Northwest. 

 The change of rule paralyzed the fur trade of Montreal for a few years ; but the love of 

 adventure and the inducements of trade led Montreal merchants again to send their agents 

 to the far interior. Three or fovrr years after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, there is record of 

 Montrealers penetrating by the canoe route even to the Saskatchewan. These were the 

 merchants, Curry and Findlay. The rival traders from Hudson Bay built Fort Cumber- 

 land on the Saskatchewan in 1774. As to the occupation for trade of Red River itself, we 

 know that Louis Nolin, whose descendants are still among the best of the Metis, arrived 

 at Red River in I77fi. Augustin Cadot, a Metis from Sault Ste. Marie in 1780, and Tous- 

 saint Vaudrie, a French interpreter, came about 1788. It was a necessity for each of the 

 companies engaged in the fixr trade to extend their agencies as far as possible, in order to 

 counterwork each other. The Montreal traders further saw the necessity of combination if 

 they would successfully oppose the Hudson's Bay Company. The union of Frobisher, 



