Red River Settlers

In 1813, Angus, a young Scot, and his family endure hardships as they attempt to start a new life in Canada. As they struggle to survive, they find themselves caught up in the rivalry between two fur-trading empires.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "First Furrows" (A History of the Early Settlement of the Red River Country; including that of Portage la Prairie) by Rev. Alfred Campbell Garrioch. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Everything went wrong. Having crossed the Atlantic for about 3 months and getting stuck in the ice of Hudson's Strait for another three weeks, the band of Swiss emigrants had to row with great hardship up the Hayes River over some 6o portages, and cross Lake Winnipeg in its full length. Arriving starved, exhausted, and deprived of their belongings at the Red River Settlement just before the snows, they were told that nothing had been prepared for them. Lodging and food was there none due to a plague of grasshoppers and floods that had destroyed the harvests of the previous four years. The so-called Promised Land was bare of any prospect. Thoroughly embittered and disgusted, one family after the other headed south between 1821 and 1826, some alone, others in groups, hoping to reach present day Minnesota as their first refuge. But to get there they had to cross over some 350 miles of prairie, a veritable desert of uncharted trails and water holes, peopled by roving Sioux looking out for victims to scalp. How did they survive? That's what the reader will find out by reading this dramatic document, which is illustrated by Peter Rindisbacher, the young artist who participated in this extraordinary venture.