RED RIVER. Three at least of the many Red Rivers of the world deserve to be mentioned,—(1) the Red River or Fleuve Rouge, the Songcoi or Thao of the Anamese, the Hoang-Kiang of the Chinese, which flows through the heart of Tong-king (q.v.) ; (2) the Red River which rises in the Stake Plain in Texas (U.S.), passes through a magnificent canon 100 miles long, and from 200 to 1000 feet deep, and furnishes a navigable channel of 1200 miles before it reaches the Mississippi (q.v.) ; (3) the Red River of the North, a somewhat smaller stream, which, rising in Elbow Lake (so called from its shape) in Minnesota (U.S.), not far from the sources of the Mississippi, crosses into Canada at Pembina, and falls into Lake Winnipeg, after a course of 565 miles (110 in Canada). The Red River of the Mississippi presents the physical geographer with a phenomenon nowhere reproduced on the same scale, —a great raft of timber and driftwood, which, in spite of the labours of Captain Shreve (1835-39) and General Williamson and Captain Linnard (1841-45), had by 1871 increased so as to block the channel for 45 miles between Spring Creek and Caroline Bluff. The Red River of the North is equally famous as the scene of some of the leading events in the history of the North-West....
Red River Settlement.— In 1811 the fifth earl of Selkirk (1771-1820), who had devoted special attention to emigration as a means of providing for the surplus population of the Scottish Highlands, obtained from the Hudson’s Bay Company a grant of land in what was then called the district of Ossiniboia (Assiniboia). In 1813 a settlement was founded by his agent, Mr Miles Macdonell, on the banks of the Red River, the first fort (Fort Daer) being at Pembina. By 1814 the settlers numbered 200. The North-West Fur-Traders of Manchester (a company which was the bitterest rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company till the two amalgamated in 1821) did all they could by force and fraud to break up the colony, which, by 1816, had taken up its headquarters at Fort Douglas, on the site of the present town of Winnipeg. The French-Indian half-breeds (Bois-Brûlés) were incited against it, and its mills and houses were burned. The earl of Selkirk, arriving on the scene, succeeded in reorganizing the community, to which the name of Kildonan was now given, after Kildonan in Helmsdale, Sutherland-shire. He found himself personally involved in a very network of hostile intrigue; but the colony was saved, and after his premature death it continued to be more or less supported by his heirs till 1824. In 1835 Lord Selkirk’s territorial claims were transferred to the Hudson’s Bay Company, who undertook to pay the expenses incurred by the family. At that date the population of the settlement consisted of about 5000 Highlanders, Bois-Brûlés, English half-breeds, and retired company officials. At the transfer of territorial jurisdiction to the Canadian Government in 1869 the Bois-Brûlés, under a certain Louis Riel (son of a Frenchman who had built the first mill on the Red river), revolted and declared an independent republic. Colonel (now Lord) Wolseley was despatched with a force of 1400 men, and without bloodshed took possession of Fort Garry on 24th August 1870. The only striking feature of the expedition was the remarkable energy with which the difficulties of transport were overcome. Riel in 1885 became the leader of another unsuccessful insurrection of half-breeds in the same region.
See Halkett, Statement respecting the Earl of Selkirk’s Settlement upon the Red River, London, 1817; G. Bryce, Manitoba, 1882 (which contains previously unpublished documents); “Narrative of the Red River Expedition,” in Blackwood’s Magazine, vols, cviii. and eix. (1871).
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