The Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba
The Old Forts of Winnipeg
(1738- 1927) -BY CHARLES NAPIER BELL, L.L.D., F.R.G.S., &c.
President of the Society
Author of Our Northern Waters, Henry's Journal, Historical Names and Places, The Selkirk Settlement and the Settlers, Some Selkirk Settlement History, Earliest Fur Traders on the Upper Red Lake (,Minn.), Mound Builders in Manitoba, Story of a Prehistoric Copper Hook.
Personal Experience as a Buffalo Hunter, 1872-3, the Red River Expedition of 1870, etc.
Published
DAWSON RICHARDSON PUBLICATIONS LIMITED WINNIPEG, 1927
ALEXANDER HENRY’S “THE FORK'S FORT.
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Alexander Henry (the nephew) a partner of the North West Company, left us a journal, which includes a lengthy account of his life on the Red River during the years 1800-8. I was fortunate enough to discover this journal in the Library of Parliament at Ottawa in 1887, and extracts from it form the substance of three papers read before the Manitoba Historical Society in 1888 (Transactions Nos. 31, 35 and 37), or nine years before the talented Dr. Elliot Coues published it in full with such extensive and wonderfully explanatory notes in three volumes under the title of "New Light on the Early History of the Great North West." Henry, on September 27th, 1803, established, as an outpost of his main trading fort at Pembina, a small trading post at the Forks, under the charge of one Louis Dorion. Henry, under date of January 19th, 1804, recorded that he visited this post for inspection, and found Dorion practically starving through lack of provisions; and about two weeks later, on reaching this establishment for the second time, found his men starving, as were also his people at Portage la Prairie. As a consequence of Dorion's experience, the post was discontinued the following year, and so another "fort" at the Forks disappeared.
It is interesting to have a record of the furs that Dorion, in conjunction with another outpost, existing at the same time, at the Dead River (now Nettley Creek), secured in trade for the North West Company. The list includes: 350 beavers, 24 black bears, 16 brown bears, 52 fishers, 35 otters, 200 martens, 146 wolverines and 700 muskrats, and a considerable mixed lot of other furs.
All the traders, who have left us journals describing their life and movements in the Red and Assiniboine rivers country, give more or less extensive notes regarding the Forks, which was the rendezvous where the brigades of canoes and boats, arriving from both Lake Superior and James Bay, re-sorted their trading goods to fill the assignments destined for the various posts and outposts scattered along both rivers up into the interior. Winnipeg's status as a distributing centre certainly dates from this period.
In Henry's journal we get a sidelight into the customs which prevailed at The Forks in 1806, when it is related that Henry, returning from an inspection of his post at Portage la Prairie to take to Fort William his brigade of boats laden with the winter's trade of furs at Grand Forks and Pembina and their outposts, joined his men at The Forks, and on the 4th June "played with J. McKenzie of the H. B. Co., with drum, fife, etc., and drank out a ten gallon keg of brandy." It is to be hoped that the brandy was the diluted article called "trade liquor," but in any case. both parties were able to leave next day en route for Albany House on James Bay, and Fort William, Lake Superior.
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FORT GIBRALTAR
The autobiographical notes of John McDonald of Garth, a partner of the North West Company, which are to be found in Masson's Volume 2, under date of 1807, contain the following passage.
"I established a fort at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, and called it "Gibraltar," though there was not a rock or stone within three miles."
Thus was established Fort Gibraltar, the headquarters of not only the fur trade of the North West Company on the Red, Assiniboine and Qu'Appelle Rivers, and country adjacent to these streams, but of the operations of that company against the Hudson's Bay Company, following the establishment of the Selkirk Colony, which came into existence in 1812, with the arrival of the first contingent of Selkirk settlers.
Fort Gibraltar was erected on the north side of the Assiniboine River, where that stream joins the Red River, and extended somewhat along the bank of the latter. In the year 1871., following my service as a soldier of the Red River expedition, under General Wolseley, which reached Fort Garry in 1870 via the old fur traders' route from Lake Superior to Winnipeg, in company with my friend Corporal (afterwards General) Sam B. Steele, I took a walk down the Assiniboine from Fort Carry a few hundred, yards to the traditional site of Fort Gibraltar, and there, plainly to be seen very near to the edge of the bank, were recognizable hollows representing cellars, and the mixture of semi-calcined limestone, remains of chimneys, and while at that time we were rather hazy on the subject of the history of Fort Gibraltar, it was clear to us that buildings of some kind had been on that ground, though it was also evident that almost the whole area of the enclosure that had once been there had disappeared into the river through the washing away and crumbling in of the banks. Steele drew to my attention several much decayed human bones and one skull close to the water's edge, which had apparently rolled down from near the general ground level of the bank through undermining by the heavy spring flood. (Henry in 1800 refers to the extensive Indian grave yard hereabouts). I am quite satisfied that the hollows and chimney debris which we then saw were the last remains of Fort Gibraltar.
I visited, and carefully inspected this site this present month, and found that if not in the two rivers, what remains of it is now buried many feet under the cinders and general refuse of the railway yard of the Canadian National.
It is not necessary for me, in connection with Fort Gibraltar, to give any details of its history after the arrival of the first Selkirk settlers, because the history of that period has been fully covered, not only by the published statements of the North West
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Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and Lord Selkirk's Colony Officials, but by a multitude of writers, who have written everything from fact to fiction regarding the aggressive acts of the two companies which took place at that time, culminating on the 17th
March 1816, in the destruction by the order of the Selkirk Colony Governor Semple of Fort Gibraltar, during the absence of the partner in charge, .%-hen even the material of the fort was pulled clown, floated by the river to Fort Douglas, nearly a mile below, .and used to strengthen the Colony Fort; and shortly after in the killing of Semple, the Colony Governor, and a number of his followers by employees of the Northwest Company on the site known as Seven Oaks, in the northern part of Winnipeg. As a result of this clashing of interests, Colonel Coltman was sent by the Governor-General of Canada as commissioner to inquire into the whole facts of the situation, and following this lamentable state of .affairs, which almost financially ruined both companies, the rival interests came together and amalgamated under the charter name of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Whether Fort Gibraltar was re-erected by the Northwest Company in .1816 has been somewhat a matter of conjecture. Beckles Wilson in. "The Great Company," states that "Fort Gibraltar had been destroyed, but the Northwester's at once set .about erecting buildings to carry on their trade."
Hon. Donald Gunn, for years following the year 1813, in the .service of the Hudson's Bay Company, finally settling in the Red River Colony, in his book "History of Manitoba," wrote as follows "The Northwest Company's fort had been razed to the ground and -could not be restored; but that active and energetic body procured new materials, built new houses and stores on the old site, and commenced business anew."
Donald Gunn lived until 1878, highly respected not only for his lovable personal qualities, but as well for the services he rendered as a veteran and valued correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.
It is to be noted that Gunn, while mentioning houses and .stores, does not include palisades or walls, but Ross in 1825 (see under heading "Fort Gam-, the First") draws: particular attention to the absence of any defensive enclosure except, two wooden bastions of the renamed fort.
The Rev. John West sent to the Red River Settlement from England in 1920 as Chaplain to the Hudson's Bay Company, udder date of the 11th Nov., 1821, wrote that he was "greatly disappointed at not having the building (schoolhouse) so far finished as to have accommodated the schoolmaster with a residence, as well as to have afforded a place for divine worship before this period. He is now resident with the Indian boys at the post which formerly belonged to the Northwest Company."
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That the Hudson's Bay Company immediately after the amalgamation did do business in a fort at the Forks is also proved by the recorded evidence of eye witnesses like Donald Murray (see statement under Fidler's Fort), for the stores of the company at Fort Douglas were closed. (Also see statement of marriage entry in St. John's Church under the heading of "Fort Garry").
FORT DOUGLAS
There was in the early days of the Red River Settlement a floating tradition that the Hudson's Bay Company at one time had a post or fort on the east bank of the Red River, opposite the mouth of the Assiniboine, in what is now St. Boniface, but I have not been able to obtain much information relating to it, and it must have had a very transitory existence.--It is true that Arrow Smith's map of the "Interior Parts of North America," which was inscribed by permission to the Hon. Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into the Hudson's Bay, and dated January 1st, 1796, shows that a house was on that site in -1780, but gives no indication as to wether or not it was a Hudson's Bay Company's establishment. I have not come across any definite claim that such a post was established by the Northwest Company, and it is generally accepted that Fort Douglas, erected on the north side of a small coulee, emptying into the Red River, at the foot of what is now Robert and George Avenues, in the City of Winnipeg (I found the coulee outlet through the river bank to be easily discerned as late as this month) was the first Hudson's Pay Company's fort established in the Winnipeg area, and this fort was not only utilized for the stores of the company, but was the official headquarters and residence of the Governor of the Selkirk Colony after the arrival of the settlers in 1812. Fort Douglas, therefore, became the centre of the Hudson's Bay Company's and Red River settlement interests. After the Seven Oaks conflict in 1816, it was temporarily occupied by the officers and employees of the Northwest Company, their own Fort Gibralter having been previously destroyed by the order of Semple, the Colony Governor.
The detailed history of Fort Douglas, like that of Fort Gibralter is so fully covered in the Government reports of the day, and hooks of many writers, more or less accurate or colored, according to the prejudices of their writers, and which may be obtained in any good Canadian library, that I need not further dilate on the subject.
After the conflicts, Fort Douglas continued to be the residence of the Colony Governor as apart from the Hudson's Bay
Company and one of these, Andrew Bulgar, writing under date of August 4th, 1822, gives a shocking description of the place. His words are: "As to what is styled Fort Douglas. It is well situated, though there is a better position for a fort about 200 yards higher up, upon the land which Mr. Pritchard gave up. But as to the fort itself, it is, as Mr. Halkett can tell you, the most filthy,
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