But in a remote corner of Rupert's Land, where the number of the
combatants was small and the conditions exceedingly primitive the comet
was alarming enough. The action of Governor Miles Macdonell in the
beginning of 1814, in forbidding the export of food from Rupert's Land
and in interfering with the liberty of the traders, Indians and
half-breeds, who had regarded themselves as outside of law, and as free
as the wind of their wild prairies, produced an open and out-spoken
dissent from every class.
The Nor'-Westers took time to consider the grave step of interrupting
trade which Governor Miles Macdonell had taken. Immediate action was
impossible. It was four hundred miles and more from the Colony to the
great emporium of the fur trade on Lake Superior. The annual gathering
of the Nor'-Westers was held at Grand Portage, the terminus of a road
nine miles long, built to avoid the rapids of the Pigeon River which
flows into Lake Superior some thirty or forty miles southwest of where
Fort William now stands. This concourse was a notable affair. From
distant Athabasca, from the Saskatchewan, from the Red River and from
Lake Winnipeg, the traders gathered in their gaily decked canoes, to
meet the gentlemen from Montreal, who came to count the gains of the
year, and lay out plans for the future.
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