It took more than fifty
years of subsequent effort to remove this impression.
These experiences took place under those governors who succeeded
Alexander Macdonell--the Grasshopper Governor. The first of them was
Captain Bulger, an unfortunate martinet, though a man of good conscience
and high ideals. He had a most uncompromising manner. He quarreled with
the Hudson's Bay Company officer at Fort Garry on the one hand, and with
old Indian Chief Peguis on the other. A whole crop of suggestions made
by the Captain on the improvement of the Colony remain in his "Red River
Papers." Bulger's successor was Governor Pelly, a relative of the
celebrated Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. The new Governor lacked
nerve and decision, and was quite unfitted for his position. His method
of dealing with an Indian murderer was long repeated on Red River as a
subject for humor, when he instructed the interpreter to announce to the
criminal: "that he had manifested a disposition subversive of all order,
and if he should not be punished in this world, he would be sure to be
punished in the next." The hopelessness of carrying on the affairs of
the Colony apart from those of the general affairs of the Hudson's Bay
Company, was now seen, and on the suggestion of Governor Simpson, the
management was placed in the hands of governors immediately responsible
to the company.
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