4 
1811 — Conveyance to Lord Selkirk, for the settlement of a 
group of Irish colonists, of an area of about 116,000 square miles 
in present-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and 
Minnesota. Miles Macdonell was chosen Governor of Assiniboia. 
He then set out with an advance party to prepare for the arrival 
of the settlers the following year. Forced to winter at the mouth 
of the Nelson, the group travelled up the Hayes the following 
spring, then down Lake Winnipeg and up the Red River to estab- 
lish the Red River Colony near what is now Winnipeg, the begin- 
ning of the present vast agricultural settlements of the western 
prairies. 
1819—22 — Sir John Franklin's first overland expedition 
from York Factory to the mouth of Coppermine River via the 
Hayes and Saskatchewan rivers and Great Slave Lake. He was 
accompanied by John Richardson, navy surgeon and naturalist, 
whose plant collections are listed in an appendix to Franklin's 
Narrative, published in 1823, and are also treated in Sir William 
Hooker's Flora Boreali- Americana. 
1821 - Union of the rival Hudson's Bay and North-West 
Companies. The disappearance of the old-time competition 
between the two companies for the trade of the interior meant 
that the Indians could now be depended upon to travel much 
longer distances to the main trading posts than formerly, and the 
lower part of the Churchill River, with its treacherous currents, 
was completely abandoned as a trading route. 
1846 — Dr. John Rae, who later discovered relics of 
Franklin's ill-fated third expedition, sailed from Churchill to 
Repulse Bay. A list of plants collected by Rae between York 
Factory and Churchill is given in his narrative of 1850. The 
collection was named by Hooker and included in his Flora 
Boreali- Americana. 
1870 — The Red River Settlement was organized as the 
Province of Manitoba. 
1879 — Robert Bell, pioneer Canadian geologist, made a 
plant collection at Churchill. This and other collections made by 
Bell along the Churchill, Nelson, and Hayes rivers and the 
coast of Hudson Bay were determined by John Macoun, founder 
of the National Herbarium of Canada, who, in 1882, was ap- 
pointed first botanist to the Geological Survey of Canada. The 
latter had been organized in 1842, with Sir William Logan, father 
of Canadian geology, as Director. 
