These were made up of
somewhat less than two hundred Selkirk Colonists, about one hundred De
Meurons, a considerable number of French Voyageurs and Freemen, Swiss
Colonists perhaps eighty, and the remainder Orkney, employees of the
Hudson's Bay Company. The Colony was, however, beginning to organize
itself. The accounts of the French settlers are very vague, an
occasional name flitting across the page of history. One family still
found on Red River banks, gains celebrity as possessing the first white
woman who came to Rupert's Land. With her husband she had gone to
Edmonton in ----, and had wandered over the prairies. In 1811, with her
husband, she first saw the Forks of Red River and wintered in 1811-12 at
Pembina, the winter which the first band of Colonists spent at York
Factory. Lajimoniere became a fast adherent of Lord Selkirk, and made a
famous and most dangerous winter journey through the wilds alone,
carrying letters from Red River to Montreal, delivered them personally
to Lord Selkirk in 1815.
The Lajimonieres received with great delight in 1818 the first Roman
Catholic missionaries who reached Red River. These were sent through
Lord Selkirk's influence, and the large gift of land known as the
Seigniory lying east of St.
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