Showing how
well both parties had timed their movements, at this very moment those
coming from the East under Trader Alexander McLeod, had reached a small
tributary of Red River some forty miles from Fort Douglas. That they at
present wished to avoid Fort Douglas is certainly true. Governor Semple
and his garrison were on the look-out, and the alarm being given, the
party from the Fort sallied forth. Was it to parley? or to fight?
The events which followed are well told in the evidence given by Mr.
John Pritchard, who afterwards acted as Lord Selkirk's secretary. Mr.
Pritchard was the grandfather of the present Archbishop Matheson of
Rupert's Land. His evidence has been in almost every respect
corroborated by other eye-witnesses of this bloody event:
"On the evening of the 19th of June, 1816, I had been upstairs in my own
room, in Fort Douglas, and about six o'clock I heard the boy at the
watch house give the alarm that the Bois-brules were coming. A few of
us, among whom was Governor Semple--there were perhaps six
altogether--looked through a spyglass, from a place that had been used
as a stable, and we distinctly saw armed persons going along the plains.
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