Section II, 1918 [1551 Trans. R.S.C. 



The Pre-Selkirk Settlers of Old Assinihoia 

 By Rev. George Bryce, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1918) 



The story of the Selkirk Settlers of Red River (1812-70) has been 

 told by the writer and others, but it is important to notice that half 

 a century before Lord Selkirk's colony took root, the Traders of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company of Montreal 

 had put their foot on the far interior of Rupert's Land. Founded in 

 1670, for a century the English company carried on their trade on the 

 shore of Hudson Bay, but as the Montreal Company led by Joseph 

 Frobisher penetrated the waters of the interior for trade in furs, and 

 built the Fort of Sturgeon Lake, the Hudson's Bay Company men led 

 by the distinguished Samuel Hearne, faced Sturgeon Lake Fort by a 

 rival post — Fort Cumberland. These hostile establishments were at 

 Poskoiac, or as we call it to-day "The Pas," on the great Saskatchewan 

 River. Hearne's men were chiefly Orkneymen, engaged on the 

 Orkney Islands, the last place of call made by the London ship as it 

 came up the east coast of Scotland and crossed the North Sea to York 

 Factory. The Nor'Wester voyageurs and workmen were chiefly 

 French Canadians from Canada and their leaders of Scottish origin 

 from Montreal. The employees of the two companies largely inter- 

 married with the Indian women of the Crée nation. They rarely 

 returned to their homes from the far West, and their children grew 

 up a sturdy, agile, and daring race — the autochthons of the Interior, 

 and like the Randolphs of Virginia, who claim descent from Pocahontas 

 — the Indian Princess — boastful of the land of their birth. These 

 children of the wilderness were in some cases sent for their education 

 to Montreal or even at times to Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In most 

 cases, however, whole families when their trading days were done, as 

 Governor Archibald used to say, floated down the streams to the 

 "Paradise of Red River" to make their homes alongside the Selkirk 

 settlers — to enjoy schools and churches — the well known "Fiddler 

 Library" and the society of the Selkirk colonists. 



This paper will give an account by the writer of men and manners, 

 as he saw them, on his making his abode under the shadow of Fort 

 Garry in the year 1871. 



The descendants of those of Orkney blood and those of French 

 Canadian ancestry — while differing in temperament, speech, and 



