them, and in the efforts of these people to retain them in their country, blood was unfortunately made to flow.
On the 17th of June, 1816, Governor Semple, of the Hudson's Bay Company, with some British troops, in trying to prevent the march of a body of mounted half-breeds, was suddenly cut down, and his troops killed, by a sweeping charge of these hardy buffalo hunters. A bloody partisan warfare was only prevented by the strong interference of the British government. In 1819 the Northwest became merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, and ceased to exist. With it may be said to have ended the Augustan age of the fur trade. With deep regret do the old voyageurs and Indians speak of the dissolution of this once powerful company, for they always received honorable and charitable treatment at their hands. The principal traders who operated among the Ojibways during the era of the Northwest Company, and who may be mentioned as contemporary with John Baptiste and Michel Cadotte, are Nolin, Gaulthier, McGillis, St. Germain, Bazille Beauleau, Chabolier, Wm. Morrison, Cotte, Roussain, Bonga, J.B. Corbin, and others. These early pioneer traders all intermarried in the tribe, and have left sons and daughters to perpetuate their names. Wm. Morrison of Montreal, and J.B. Corbin, of Lac Coutereille, are now[1] the only survivors of all these old traders.
For the above brief account of the early fur trade, I am indebted to Hon. Allan Morrison of Crow Wing, who has been for upwards of thirty years a trader among the Ojibways, and who is a grandson of Waddon, whose murder led to the formation of the Northwest Company.
To Mr. Bruce, of St. Croix Lake, now in his seventy-ninth year, mostly passed in the northwest, I am also indebted for information. At the dissolution of the Northwest Company, citizens of the United States began seriously
- ↑ A.D. 1852.
