ctors to
take the very wise step of sending out two representatives--one from
each of the old companies to rearrange all matters and settle all
disputes. The two delegates were Nicholas Garry, the Vice-Governor of
the Hudson's Bay Company, and Simon McGillivray, who bore one of the
most influential names of the Nor'-Wester traders. They were not,
however, equally well liked. Garry was a courteous, fair, and kindly
gentleman. He won golden opinions among officers and settlers alike.
McGillivray was suspicious and selfish, so the records of the time
state. They came to the Red River in 1821, and Garry entered
particularly into the arrangement of the Forts at the Forks. The old
Fort Douglas was retained as Colony Fort, and the small Hudson's Bay
Company trading house as well as Fort Gibraltar were absorbed into the
new fort which was erected on the banks of the Assiniboine between Main
Street and the bank of the Red River. All the letters and documents of
the time speak of Governor Garry's visits as carrying a gleam of
sunshine wherever he went and it was appropriate that the new fort built
in the following year should bear the name Fort Garry. This was the
wooden fort, which still remained in existence though superseded as a
fort in 1850.

At the time of Governor Garry's visit the population of the settlement
may be considered to have been about five hundred. These were made up of
somewhat less than two hundred Selkirk Colonists, about one hundred De
Meurons, a considerable number of French Voyageurs and Freemen, Swiss
Colonists perhaps eighty, and the remainder Orkney, employees of the
Hudson's Bay Company. The Colony was, however, beginning to organize
itself. The accounts of the French settlers are very vague, an
occasional name flitting across the page of history. One family still
found on Red River banks, gains celebrity as possessing the first white
woman who came to Rupert's Land. With her husband she had gone to
Edmonton in ----, and had wandered over the prairies. In 1811, with her
husband, she first saw the Forks of Red River and wintered in 1811-12 at
Pembina, the winter which the first band of Colonists spent at York
Factory. Lajimoniere became a fast adherent of Lord Selkirk, and made a
famous and most dangerous winter journey through the wilds alone,
carrying letters from Red River to Montreal, delivered them personally
to Lord Selkirk in 1815.

The Lajimonieres received with great delight in 1818 the firs