Cornerstone Colony

Cornerstone Colony
Selkirk's Contribution to the Canadian West
Copyright 1977 Western Producer Prairie Books
Cover designed by Warren Clark
218 pages,
ISBN 0-919306-80-2.

In the absence of more cattle, he would pursue the Earl's instructions to catch buffalo calves and try to domesticate them. Catching the calves was not difficult and several were brought to the Daer encampment but "they died for want of milk," all except one heifer which became so tame that she was a nuisance and she remained around Point Douglas for years, sometimes hitched to a Red River cart, sometimes to a plow. And while the Red River men were catching buffalo calves, Lord Selkirk was proposing an experimental attempt to domesticate the caribou in the North and a test with "musk buffalo" or muskoxen to be brought to Red River. Macdonell was showing no enthusiasm for the proposed caribou and muskox proposals but promised to capture more buffalo calves.

Meanwhile, the little herd of domestic cattle was encountering trouble, especially the two wayward males. First, the bull which Peter Fidler bought from the rival Company at Fort Souris, became unmanageable and dangerous, inviting the observation that he brought with him the mean disposition of the North West Company people. Since Adam was still active and well, the second .bull was not needed anyway and in the interest of safety it was decided to slaughter the fractious one. Granted, the small herd did not need more than one bull but at some point during the ensuing winter, Adam felt the urge to wander and, exercising a bull's prerogative, disappeared. A search for the all-important herd sire proved futile and Adam was not seen again until spring when his dead body was observed floating down the river on a piece of ice. Presumably he had gone for a drink at a water-hole and fallen in and drowned. Now there was no mature bull in the Colony, a condition that did not bid well for herd expansion, but fortunately, Adam left behind a young son, the bull calf born to Eve, now the only surviving male of his race on half a continent.

When Capt. Matthey became the Earl's agent at Red River some years later, he mentioned 'poor wounded Adam and Eve" as being the most dependable draft animals in service at the time. This is not a contradiction of the story of Adam's drowning but has reference to the original Eve who would be a seven-year-old cow and her son who apparently inherited his father's name and survived a wounding by gunshot to serve as both herd sire and draft animal in the community."

The same Peter Fidler who had enriched the settlement's cattle numbers came down at the end of May, 1813, to survey the farm lots in the area of Point Douglas, so that settlers would know exactly where their land started and ended. Each 100-acre lot, long and narrow, fronted on the river, thereby giving all settlers an equal advantage in access to the water highway and allowing homes to be built close to neighbors. On a farm 220 yards wide and two miles long, the house and other buildings would be situated close to the river's high-water mark; then there would be the cultivated land and back of all the pasture and hayland.

Notwithstanding the failure of almost all crops except potatoes in that first year, people were optimistic and cheerful, sufficiently confident that they were pressing Miles Macdonell to obtain a windmill for use in grinding the grain they were yet to grow. As they came to a better understanding of the country, they were sure they would make fewer mistakes. Already they had demonstrated that buffalo meat in winter and pemmican and fish in summer could sustain them until crops became more reliable. There was nothing wxopg with the area, as Captain Macdonell assured the Earl. "The country," he said, speaking like the President of the Chamber of Commerce, "exceeds any idea I had formed of its goodness. I am only astonished it has lain so long unsettled."

He knew the questions Selkirk would be raising and hastened to report. Respecting the Indians, he was still uncertain if a treaty should be made. "Those here do not call themselves owners of the soil although long in possession. It belonged originally to the Crees whom the Assiniboines - a branch of the Sioux - drove off. A small annual present will satisfy the Indians here," he reported.

It was noteworthy that in that first year in the country, the Selkirk people encountered no Indian hostility. A bigger worry appeared to be the possibility of invasion from the United States because of the War of 1812 still gripping the boundary area farther to the east. Some modest precautions were taken but there was no invasion.

Captain Miles Macdonell might have experienced more longing to get into that war than to escape from it. He might have wished he were free to return to his regiment in the East, especially after receiving letters from his brother, John Macdonell, a partner in the North West Company. Brother John expressed his regret that Miles had accepted a position in Lord Selkirk's scheme, prophesying that the Colony would not last long. He was sorry, also, that Miles, because of his obligation to Selkirk, was not in a position to take his place in the armed services where he would, no doubt, qualify for his commission as major "in the Glengarries."

Adding to the danger of the moment for the Selkirk people was the fact that their winter quarters occupied in two seasons at Pembina - whether it was known or not - were actually on the American side of the 49th parallel. But Pembina and Red River were far from the scenes of active dispute and combat, and the war was over before it might have reached the West.

The settlers hoped they could remain at Point Douglas, to be their home base, for the winter of 1813-14, but Miles Madonell ruled that they must go again to Pembina. It was still a matter of food supplies. Crops, except for potatoes, had been disappointing and there was the next group of settlers - the people from Sutherlandshire who were somewhere en route - to be considered. Miles Macdonell, leaving Point Douglas on July 18, traveled to York Factory to meet the newcomers and escort them to Red River but found to his disappointment and anger that a dogmatic ship's captain had discharged the human cargo at the Fort at the mouth of the Churchill River where the people would be obliged to spend the winter. But nothing could be done about it and Macdonell rushed back south with all the speed he could get out of a canoe to see his people there becoming settled in winter cabins at Pembina and reconciled to another six months on a buffalo meat diet.

Surprisingly, the Pembina atmosphere was very much more pleasant in that second winter, mainly because the traders of both the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company had deserted their posts. Apparently it was the presence of the settlers and the increased competition for food supplies that drove the traders away. It meant, however, that the settlers had the place 'almost to themselves and Miles Macdonell had nobody except his own people with whom to quarrel.