ere true representatives of the _coureurs de bois_ of the days of
Frontenac. This class was numerous in 1869 when the government of
Canada first presented itself to claim the territory of the {387}
Northwest as a part of the Dominion. After years of negotiation the
Hudson's Bay Company had recognised the necessity of allowing the army
of civilisation to advance into the region which it had so long kept as
a fur preserve. The British Government obtained favourable terms for
the Dominion, and the whole country from line 49 degrees to the Arctic
region, and from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains became a portion
of the Canadian domain, with the exception of small tracts of land in
the vicinity of the company's posts, which they still continue to
maintain wherever the fur trade can be profitably carried on. In 1869
the Canadian ministry, of which Sir John Macdonald was premier, took
measures to assume possession of the country, where they proposed to
establish a provisional government. Mr. William McDougall, a prominent
Canadian Liberal, one of the founders of confederation, always an
earnest advocate of the acquisition of the Northwest, was appointed to
act as lieutenant-governor as soon as the formal transfer was made.
This transfer, however, was not completed until a few months later than
it was at first expected, and the government of Canada appears to have
acted with some precipitancy in sending surveyors into the country, and
in allowing Mr. McDougall to proceed at once to the scene of his
proposed government. It would have been wise had the Canadian
authorities taken measures to ascertain the wishes of the small but
independent population with respect to the future government of their
own country. The British as well as French settlers resented the {388}
hasty action of the Canadian authorities. The halfbreeds, little
acquainted with questions of government, saw in the appearance of
surveying parties an insidious attempt to dispossess them eventually of
their lands, to which many of them had not a sound title. The British
settlers, the best educated and most intelligent portion of the
population, believed that a popular form of government should have been
immediately established in the old limits of Assiniboia, as soon as it
became a part of Canada. Some of the Hudson's Bay Company's employes
were not in their hearts pleased at the transfer, and the probable
change in their position in a country where they