th
difficulty he managed to pull over the St. James rapids, and reached
where Portage la Prairie now stands, and sixty miles from the site of
Winnipeg claimed the country for his Royal Master. Here he collected the
Indians, made them his friends, and proceeded to build a great fort, and
named it after Mary of Poland, the unfortunate Queen of France--"Fort de
la Reine," or Queen's Fort. But he could not forget "The Forks"--the
Winnipeg of to-day--and so gave instructions to one of his lieutenants
to stop with a number of his men at the Forks, cut down trees, and erect
a fort for safety in coming and going up the Assiniboine. The Frenchmen
worked hard, and on the south side of the junction of the Red River with
the Assiniboine, erected Fort Rouge--the Red Fort. This fort, built in
1738, was the first occupation of the site of the City of Winnipeg. The
French Captain Verandrye, his sons and his men, made further journeys to
the far West, even once coming in sight of the Rocky Mountains. But
French Canada was doomed. In twenty years more Wolfe was to wrench
Canada from France and make it British. The whole French force of
soldiers, free traders, and voyageurs were needed at Montreal and
Quebec. Not a Frenchman seems to have remained behind, and for a number
of years the way to the West was blocked up. The canoes went to decay,
the portages grew up with weeds and underwood, and the Western search
for furs from Montreal was suspended.

THE INDIANS OF THE RED RIVER.

No man knew the Indian better than Andrew McDermott. No one knew better
how to trade and dicker with the red man of the prairie. He could tell
of all the feuds of tribe with tribe, and of the wonderful skill of the
Fur Companies in keeping order among the Indian bands. The Red River had
not, after the departure of the French, been visited by travellers for
well nigh forty years. No doubt bands of Indians had threaded the
waterways, and carried their furs in one year to Pigeon River, on Lake
Superior, or to Fort Churchill, or York Factory on Hudson Bay. It was
only some ten or fifteen years before the coming of the Selkirk
Colonists that the fur traders, though they for forty years had been
ascending the Saskatchewan, had visited Red River at all. No missionary
had up to the coming of the Colonists ever appeared on the banks of the
Red River. Some ten years before the settler's advent, the fur traders
on the upper Red River had most bitter rivalries and for two