The few French
people who were freemen, lived in what is now the St. Boniface side of
the river, were only living from hand to mouth, and the Company's people
were little better provided. The river was the only resource, and from
the scarceness of hooks the supply of fish obtainable was rather scanty.
As the Colonists and their leader were strangers they desired leisure to
select a suitable location for their buildings. For the time being their
camp was at the Forks, on the east side of the river, a little north of
the mouth of the Assiniboine.
The Governor, Miles Macdonell, on the 4th of September, summoned three
of the North-West Company gentlemen, the free Canadians beside whom they
were encamped, and a number of the Indians to a spectacle similar to
that enacted by St. Lawson, at Sault Ste. Marie, nearly a hundred and
fifty years before. The Nor'-Westers had not permitted their employees
to cross the river. Facing, as he did, Fort Gibraltar, across the river,
the Governor directed the patent of Lord Selkirk to his vast concession
to be read, "delivering and seizin were formally taken," and Mr. Heney
translated some part of the Patent into French for the information of
the French Canadians.
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