[TYRRELL] PETER FIDLER, TRADER AND SURVEYOR 119 



After having spent four years in the Saskatchewan country, 

 through which he probably made surveys, though the character 

 and extent of the surveys are not yet known, he descended the 

 river to York Factory where he started a series of meteorological ob- 

 servations, the results of which for the next fourteen years, with the 

 exact places at which they were taken, we now have, so that for that 

 time there is no uncertainty as to his movements. 



From 1793 to September 5th, 1795, he remained at York Factory 

 acting as a clerk and trader at that post and receiving a salary of £25 

 a year for his services. 



On the 26th of June 1794 the following remark is entered in his 

 register: — "South Branch House burnt and plundered by the Fall 

 Indians, 3 men, 1 woman and 2 children murdered, and 2 carried away 

 as slaves, young women. Canadians kUled and wounded 14 of these 

 Indians in ye attack." On August 11th of the same year there is 

 the following entry, "8 Canoes of Englishmen arrived from Cumber- 

 land House with the news of the S. Branch. Mr. Vandereil with 

 them. " 



In a letter wi'itten by Joseph Colen and his associates at York 

 Factory to the Governor of the Company in England the following 

 brief statement is made about the destruction of South Branch and 

 Manchester Houses, with regard to both of which attacks we have hither- 

 to been very much in the dark; "The natives have been and are very 

 hostile to your Honour's Servants inland. They attacked Manchester 

 House last Fall, where only seven resided, plundered the house of 

 every article of trading goods, which they carried away. The men 

 escaped only with the clothes on their backs. The easy conquest 

 of valuable booty obtained at Manchester induced a vast number of 

 the same tribes to attack the South Branch on the 24th of June last, 

 where they killed Magnus Annel, Hugh Brough and Wm. Fea, plundered 

 and set fire to the house, and carried off in triumph the scalps of the 

 unfortunate sufferers. Mr. Vanderial escaped their fury by concealing 

 himself in an old vault, and afterwards directed his way to Cumberland. 

 It is much to be feared that Buckingham House ere this has shared 

 the same fate. " 



Fidler's Note is more exact as to the fate of most of the inhabitants, 

 and probably his date of the 26th of June would be more exact than 

 Colen's of the 24th of the same month. 



On the 5th of September, 1795, he left York Factory, and on the 

 21st of October reached a place which he calls Charlton House on the 

 upper waters of the Assiniboine River in latitude 51° 47', where he 

 remained for the winter. Two years later a trading post in the im- 

 mediate vicinity owned by the North-West Company was visited by 



