York Factory as being the port of entry for the southern prairie country
was a place of some importance. As in the largest number of cases, other
than a few huts for workmen, and a few Indian families, the Fort was the
only centre of life in the whole region. Two rivers, the Nelson and the
Hayes, enter the Hudson Bay at this point--the Nelson being the more
northerly of the two. Between the two rivers is really a delta or low
swampy tongue of land. On the Nelson's north bank, the land near the Bay
is low, while inland there is a rising height. Five or six different
sites of forts are pointed out at this point. These have been built on
during the history of the Company, which dates back to 1670. In Lord
Selkirk's time the factory was more than half a mile from the Bay and
lay between the two rivers. Miles Macdonell states that it was on "low,
miry ground without a ditch." The stagnant water by which the post was
surrounded would be productive of much ill-health, were there a longer
summer. The buildings of the Factory were also badly planned, and badly
constructed, so that the Fort was unsuitable for quartering the
Colonists. Besides this, Messrs. Cook and Auld, the former Governor of
York Factory, and the latter chief officer of Fort Churchill, having the
old Hudson's Bay Company's spirit of dislike of Colonists, decided that
the new settlers, being an innovation and an evil, should have separate
quarters built for them at a distance from the Fort.
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