324 DISPUTES OF BRITISH FUR COMPANIES. [1816 



This feeling was displayed only in words, or in the commission of 

 petty acts of injury or annoyance by each against the other, until 

 1814, when a regular war broke out between the parties, which 

 was, for some time after, openly carried on. The scene of the 

 hostilities was the territory traversed by the Red River of Hudson's 

 Bay and its branches, in which Lord Selkirk, a Scotch nobleman, 

 had, in 1811, obtained from the Hudson's Bay Company a grant 

 of not less than a hundred thousand square miles, for the establish- 

 ment of agricultural colonies. The validity of this grant was 

 denied by the North-West Company, to which the proposed occu- 

 pation of the territory in question would have been absolutely 

 ruinous, as the routes from Canada to the north-western trading 

 posts ran through it, and from it were obtained nearly all the pro- 

 visions consumed at those posts. The British government, however, 

 appeared to favor and protect Lord Selkirk's project, and a large 

 number of Scotch Highlanders were, without opposition, established 

 on Red River, the country about which received, in 1812, the 

 name of Ossinobia. For two years after the formation of the set- 

 tlement, peace was maintained; at length, in January, 1814, Miles 

 Macdonnel, the governor of the new province, issued a proclama- 

 tion, in which he set forth the limits of the region claimed by his 

 patron, and prohibited all persons, under pain of seizure and 

 prosecution, from carrying out of it " any provisions, either of flesh, 

 dried meat, grain, or vegetables," during that year. The attempts 

 to enforce this prohibition were resisted by the North- West traders, 

 who appeared so resolute in their determination not to yield, that 

 the colonists became alarmed, and quitted the country, some of 

 them returning to Canada, and others emigrating to the United 

 States. In the following year, Lord Selkirk again sent settlers of 

 various nations to the Red River, between whom and the North- 

 West people hostilities were immediately begun. Posts were taken 

 and destroyed on both sides; and, on the 19th of June, 1816, a 

 battle was fought, in which the Ossinobians were routed, and 

 seventeen of their number, including their governor, Mr. Semple, 

 were killed. The country was then again abandoned by the 

 settlers.* 



These affairs were brought before the British Parliament in June, 



* Lord Selkirk's Sketch of the British Fur Trade in North America, published in 

 1816, and the review of it in the London Quarterly Review for October, 1816 — 

 Narrative of the Occurrences in the Indian Countries of America, published by the 

 North- West Company in 1817, containing all the documents on the subject. 



