What was the Selkirk Settlement?

The Selkirk Settlement (Red River Colony) was an agricultural colony of Scottish and Irish settlers established by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk (1771 to 1820) in 1812 at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, on the site of present-day Winnipeg. The Selkirk Settlement was the first European agricultural settlement on the Canadian prairies and a critical seed for what became Manitoba. The Earl of Selkirk acquired 300,000 square kilometres of Hudson's Bay Company territory (called Assiniboia) in 1811 in exchange for promising to settle Highland Scots displaced by the Highland Clearances.

The first group of about 35 Scottish and Irish settlers led by Miles Macdonell arrived at the Forks in August 1812 after a difficult journey from York Factory on Hudson Bay. They wintered at Pembina (near the present-day North Dakota border) and returned to the Forks the next summer. Additional groups arrived in 1813, 1814, and 1815. Conditions were extremely harsh: the settlers struggled with Manitoba winters, prairie fires, locust swarms (the Rocky Mountain locust plague of 1818 to 1819), and limited supplies. Many settlers died of disease and exposure.

The settlement faced active hostility from the North West Company, the Montreal-based fur-trade rival of the Hudson's Bay Company. The North West Company saw the Selkirk Settlement as a threat to the pemmican supply that fed its voyageur brigades. Tensions escalated when Macdonell issued the Pemmican Proclamation of January 8, 1814, prohibiting the export of pemmican from the settlement. The Métis (descendants of NWC voyageurs and Indigenous women, who had emerged as a distinct people on the prairies) increasingly identified with the NWC against the settlement. The conflict culminated in the Battle of Seven Oaks on June 19, 1816, in which a Métis force led by Cuthbert Grant killed Governor Robert Semple and 20 settlers near the Forks.

The Earl of Selkirk personally led a counter-expedition that captured the NWC's Fort William on Lake Superior in August 1816 and re-established control of the Red River Settlement. After Selkirk's death in 1820, the conflict between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company was resolved by their merger on March 26, 1821 under the Hudson's Bay Company name. The Red River Settlement grew slowly through the 19th century, becoming a multi-cultural community of European settlers, Métis, and Indigenous peoples. By 1869 it had a population of about 12,000. The Red River Resistance of 1869 to 1870 led to Manitoba's entry into Confederation on July 15, 1870. The original Selkirk Settlement is commemorated by the Selkirk monument at Lower Fort Garry National Historic Site.