Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/513

Rh of mountain, plain, lake, river, valley, and hill have been visited by the wild, lawless, and desperate roamers have attached to the localities names often vulgar, low, and filthy. These offensive names ought not to be retained to degrade and vilify the regions, often so fair and sublime, especially as the Indian names which they displace are so beautiful and fitting. Why call the grand summits the Rocky Mountains? All mountains are rocky. The Indian name for them is the Chippewyan.

The once famous Red River Settlement, another enterprise not of the British Government, but of its subjects, dates from 1811. The Earl of Selkirk, Thomas Douglas, a large proprietor in the Hudson Bay Company, purchased from it and from the Cree and Sauteux or Ojibwa Indians, for an annuity of one hundred pounds of tobacco to each, — not a very generous equivalent, — land on both banks of the Red River and the Assiniboine. This had long been in its undisturbed wilderness condition as a mere preserve of the fur-bearing animals. It was roamed over by wandering Indians, who visited the trading-posts of the employés of the two rival companies, — the Hudson Bay and the Northwest. The enormous herds of buffalo which once coursed it have disappeared. The settlers under Selkirk were Scotch. They planted themselves on the soil with many discomfitures and hardships. Being under the patronage of the Bay Company they were attacked by those in the interest of the Northwest Company, Canadians and half-breeds, and twice driven from their settlement. On their return for a third trial, grasshoppers and myriads of blackbirds consumed their growing crops and reduced them to famine. Not till 1821, after nine years of sturdy toil against all obstacles, did the enterprise become in a measure successful. The two rival fur-companies formed a coalition. In 1835 the Bay Company purchased the Red River Settlement of Lord Selkirk's executors. He had spent upon his colony £85,000 sterling. Near Opashkwa Lake, in the Red River