Miles MacDonell
From Freepedia
Miles MacDonell (c. 1767 – 28 June 1828), was the first governor of Red River Colony (or, Assiniboia), a 19th-century Scottish settlement located in present-day Manitoba and North Dakota.
MacDonell was hired as governor in 1803 by Lord Selkirk, a shareholder in the Hudson's Bay Company. Selkirk bought 300,000 km2 (116,000 mi2) of land in the Red River Valley from the company in order to provide a home in the New World for destitute Scots and to deny the land to Hudson's Bay's commercial rival, the North West Company.
MacDonell, who had been born in Inverness but spent most of his life in the United States and Canada, collected a small group of emigrants and sailed from Stornoway for the colony in 1811. They wintered at York Factory, and reached the Red River the following August.
The early life of the colony was marred by warfare between the Red River colonists on one side and local North West Company agents and their Indian allies on the other. In 1815, MacDonell was taken prisoner by North West Company fighters, and sent to Montréal under armed guard, supposedly in order to stand trial for his actions as governor.
After the charges against MacDonell were dismissed, he lived the rest of his life as a farmer in Ontario.
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Categories: 1767 births | 1828 deaths | Fur trade | Canadian historical figures | Canadian people stubs
