INTRODUCTION 



The Important events of A.D. 1857, and the negotiations which led 



to the Transfer of the Hudson's Bay Territories — Former 



Treaties and the Treaty Commission of 1899. 



The terms upon which Canada obtained her great posses- 

 sions in the West are generally known, and much has been 

 written regarding the tentative steps by which, after long 

 years of waiting, she acquired them. The distinctively prairie, 

 or southern, portion of the country and its outliers, consti- 

 tuting " Prince Rupert's Land," had been claimed by the 

 Hudson's Bay Company since May, 1670, as an absolute 

 freehold. This and the North-West Territories, in which, 

 under terminable lease from the Crown, the Company exer- 

 cised, as in British Columbia, exclusive rights to trade only, 

 were, as the reader knows, transferred to Canada by Imperial 

 sanction at the same time. It is not the author's intention, 

 therefore, to cumber his pages with trite or irrelevant matter ; 

 yet certain transactions which preceded this primordial and 

 greatest treaty of all not unfittingly may be set forth, though 

 in the briefest way, as a pardonable introduction to the 

 following record. 



The year 1857 was an eventful one in the annals of " The 

 North-West," the name by which the Territories were gen- 

 erally known in Canada.* In that year two expeditions 



*An important event in Red River was begot of the stirring inci- 

 dents of this year, namely, the starting at Fort Garry, in December, 

 1859, by two gentlemen from Canada, Messrs. Buckingham and 

 Caldwell, of the first newspaper printed in British territory east 

 of British Columbia and west of Lake Superior. It was called the 

 Nor'-wester, but, having few advertisements, and only a limited 

 circulation, the originators sold out to Dr. (afterwards Sir John) 

 Schultz, who, at his own expense, published the paper, almost down 

 to the Transfer, as an advocate of Canadian annexation, immigration 

 and development. 



