Toward spring food was scarcer.
[Illustration: HON. DONALD GUNN Schoolmaster, Naturalist and Legislator.
York Factory, 1813; Red River, 1823; Died at Little Britain. 1878.]
In May the winterers of Pembina returned to their settlement at the
Colony. They sought to begin the cultivation of their farms, but they
were helpless. The tough prairie sod had to be broken up and worked
over, but the only implement which the Colonist had to use was a simple
hoe, the one harrow being incomplete. The crofters were poor farmers,
for they were rather fishermen. But the fish in Red River were scarce in
this year, so that even the fisher's art which they knew was of little
avail to them. The summer of 1813 was thus what the old settlers would
call an "Off-Year," for even the small fruits on the plains were far
from abundant. These being scarce, the chief food of the settlers for
all that summer through was the "Prairie turnip." This is a variety of
the pea family, known as the Astragalus esculenta, which with its large
taproot grows quite abundantly on the dry plains. An old-time trader,
who was lost for forty days and only able to get the Prairie turnip,
practically subsisted in this way.
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