Alarm was now general among
the French half-breeds. Hitherto the English half-breeds had been loyal
to the Company. Alexander Ross gives an incident worth repeating as to
how even the English half-breeds became rebellious. He says: "One of the
Company's officers, residing at a distance, had placed two of his
daughters at the boarding-school in the Settlement. An English
half-breed, a comely well-behaved young man, of respectable connections,
was paying his addresses to one of these young ladies, and had asked her
in marriage. The young lady had another suitor in the person of a Scotch
lad, but her affections were in favor of the former, while her guardian,
the chief officer in Red River, preferred the latter. In his zeal to
succeed in the choice he had made for the young lady, this gentleman
sent for the half-breed and reprimanded him for aspiring to the hand of
a lady, accustomed, as he expressed it, to the first society. The young
man, without saying a word, put on his hat and walked out of the room;
but being the leading man among his countrymen, the whole community took
fire at the insult. 'This is the way,' said they, 'that we half-breeds
are despised and treated.
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