eople
Assiniboia--the Indian name he gave to his wide domain--were baulked by
the opposition of the employees of the North-west Company, who regarded
this colonising scheme as fatal to the fur trade. In the territory
conveyed to Lord Selkirk, the Montreal Company had established posts
upon every river and lake, while the Hudson's Bay Company had only one
fort of importance, Fort Douglas, within a short distance of the
North-west Company's post of Fort Gibraltar, at the confluence of the
Red and Assiniboine Rivers, where the city of Winnipeg now stands. The
quarrel between the Scotch settlers who were under the protection of the
Hudson's Bay Company and the North-westers, chiefly composed of French
Canadians and French half-breeds, or _Metis_ culminated in 1816, in the
massacre of Governor Semple and twenty-six other persons connected with
the new colony by a number of half-breeds. Two years later, a number of
persons who had been arrested for this murder were tried at York in
Upper Canada, but the evidence was so conflicting on account of the
false swearing on the part of the witnesses that the jury were forced to
acquit the accused. Lord Selkirk died at Pau, in 1820, but not before he
had made an attempt to assist his young settlement, almost broken up by
the shameful attack of 1816.

The little colony managed to exist, but its difficulties were aggravated
from time to time by the ravages of clouds of grasshoppers which
devastated the territories and brought the people to the verge of
starvation. In March, 1821, the North-west Company made over all their
property to the older company, which now reigned supreme throughout the
territories. All doubts as to their rights were set at rest by an act of
parliament giving them a monopoly of trade for twenty-one years in what
were then generally known as the Indian territories, that vast region
which lay beyond the confines of Rupert's Land, and was not strictly
covered by the charter of 1670. This act was re-enacted in 1838 for
another twenty-one years. No further extension, however, was ever
granted, as an agitation had commenced in Canada by 1859 for the
surrender of the company's privileges and the opening up of the
territories, so long a great "lone land," to enterprise and settlement.
When the two rival companies were united, Mr., afterwards Sir, George
Simpson, became governor, and he continued to occupy that position until
1860, when he died in his residence at Lachine,