Red River Settlement

Home > History > United States and Canada > Canadian History

Red River Settlement agricultural colony in present Manitoba, North Dakota, and Minnesota. It was the undertaking of Thomas Douglas, 5th earl of Selkirk . Wishing to relieve the dispossessed and impoverished in Scotland and Northern Ireland, he secured enough control of the Hudson's Bay Company to obtain from it a grant of land called Assiniboia. This project met opposition from the very start, principally from the North West Company , but also from the fur traders in the Hudson's Bay Company. Despite efforts to discourage the colony, Miles Macdonnell, a Selkirk man, brought a small group to the colony in 1812. The determined hostility of the North West Company mounted, especially after the company men had won the half-breeds, or métis, entirely to their side. By cajolery and threat they persuaded settlers to desert, but a new group of settlers came, and the colony was restored in 1815. North West Company men and half-breeds now resorted to violence on a large scale, killing 22 in the massacre of Seven Oaks (June 19, 1816). On hearing the news of the massacre, Selkirk fell upon the North West Company post, Fort William, and seized it. Other attacks followed. The result of these moves was a series of court charges and countercharges that impoverished Selkirk and helped to bring about the union (1821) of the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company. Agriculture had by this time been firmly established on the Western plains, and the Red River settlements were to grow and flourish. See Riel, Louis .

Bibliography: See J. P. Pritchett, The Red River Valley, 1811–1849 (1942); J. M. Gray, Lord Selkirk of Red River (1964).

Red River Settlement An early 19th-century agricultural colony in the Red River (now Manitoba) area of central Canada that was granted by the Hudson's Bay Company to Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk (1771–1820). Selkirk endeavoured to settle the dispossessed of Scotland and Northern Ireland there. His first group of settlers succumbed to North West Company pressure to abandon the area soon after their arrival in 1812. The colony was re-established in 1816, but 22 settlers were killed in a massacre at Seven Oaks, led by North West Company men and other attacks followed. Selkirk himself went bankrupt, but the publicity attracted by the affair led to the forced merger (1821) of the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company and cleared the way for more successful settlement in the area.