10 



"The legal opinions given certainly justify the Governor 

 in the steps taken. He proposed, what is usually considered 

 the right of government, to take possession of supplies if life 

 is at stake, and not only so, but to recompense in full for the 

 amount taken. But it was a claim of supremacy ; it meant 

 the diminution of Nor'-wester influence over the Bois-Brules 

 and Indians, and must be resisted at all hazards. 



"The council of Nor- westers that met at Fort William in 

 the summer of 1814, was presided over by the Hon. William 

 McGillivray, the principal partner of the North-west Com- 

 pany. Mr. Pritchard gives evidence that he received direct 

 information from Mackenzie, one of the North-west agents, 

 that the following plan had been devised to accomplish the 

 ruin of the settlement : 



"The intention of the North-west Company was to seduce 

 and inveigle away as many of the colonists and settlers at 

 Red Biver as they could induce to join them ; and after they 

 should thus have diminished their means of defence, to raise 

 the Indians of Lac Rouge, Fond du Lac, and other places, to 

 act and destroy the settlement ; and that it was also their 

 intention to bring the Governor, Miles Macdonell, down to 

 Montreal as a prisoner, by way of degrading the authority 

 under which the colony was established in the eyes of the 

 natives of that country." 



" Who shall say after that that the spirit of the Nor'- 

 westers since the days of Peter fond had been in any way 

 ameliorated ? 



"Had they a grievance, the courts of England, wdiere they 

 had much influence, w^ere open to them. But no ' Indians 

 and Bois-Brules must be stirred up, like the letting out of 

 water, to end no one could tell where ; and the words of 

 Simon McGilliv^ray, a Nor'-wester partner, in writing from 

 London in 1812: "Lord Selkirk must be driven to abandon 

 the project, for his success would strike at the very existence 

 of our trade," are seen carried out into action. The smoking 

 homesteads of 1815, and the mournful band of three-score 

 persons taking the route down Red River, across Lake Win- 



