Assiniboine Rivers, five establishments, two of them being those of free
traders or independents. Among all these Companies the commander of a
Fort was called, "The Bourgeois" to suit the French tongue of the men.
He was naturally a man of no small importance.


"THE DUSKY RIDERS OF THE PLAINS."

But the conditions, in which both the traders and the voyageurs lived,
brought a disturbing shadow over the wide plains of the North-West. Now
under British rule, the Fur trade from Montreal became a settled
industry. From Curry's time (1766) they began to erect posts or depots
at important points to carry on their trade. Around these posts the
voyageurs built a few cabins and this new centre of trade afforded a
spot for the encampment near by of the Indian teepees made of tanned
skins. The meeting of the savage and the civilized is ever a contact of
peril. Among the traders or officers of the Fur trade a custom grew
up--not sanctioned by the decalogue--but somewhat like the German
Morganatic marriage. It was called "Marriage of the Country." By this in
many cases the trader married the Indian wife; she bore children to him,
and afterwards when he retired from the country, she was given in real
marriage to some other voyageur, or other employee, or pensioned off. It
is worthy of note that many of these Indian women became most true and
affectionate spouses. With the voyageurs and laborers the conditions
were different. They could not leave the country, they had become a part
of it, and their marriages with the Indian women were bona fide. Thus it
was that during the space from the time of Curry until the arrival of
the Selkirk Colonists upwards of forty years had elapsed, and around the
wide spread posts of the Fur Trading Companies, especially around those
of the prairie, there had grown up families, which were half French and