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Red River Valley: Manitoba
When the Hudson's Bay Company first started trading in furs in 1670, it required strong, hardy workers who could work long seasons in the New world wilderness. Ships sailing from London, England would stop over in the Hebrides Islands and Highland Coastal Villages of Scotland to hire-on workers, and these men were the first to bring Gaelic to the Canadian interior. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and is one of the oldest in the world. Its initials have often been satirically interpreted as "Here Before Christ". From its longtime headquarters at York Factory on Hudson Bay, it controlled the fur trade throughout much of British-controlled North America for several centuries, undertaking early exploration and functioning as the de facto government in many areas of the continent prior to the arrival of large-scale settlement. Its traders and trappers forged early relationships with many groups of First Nations/Native Americans and its network of trading posts formed the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of western Canada and the United States. In the late 19th century, its vast territory became the largest component in the newly formed Dominion of Canada, in which the company was the largest private landowner. With the decline of the fur trade, the company evolved into mercantile business selling vital goods to settlers in the Canadian West.[The Darien Scheme] With the Scottish Highland Clearances (c. 1762) many Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were forced from their homes by landlords eager to make way for livestock. In 1773 The Hector landed with 189 Gaelic-speaking settlers at Pictou, on the Nova Scotia mainland. In 1784 a law restricting land-ownership on Cape Breton Island was repealed, freeing up the vast territory the Scots would nickname Tir nan Croabh (Land of Trees). It is estimated more than 50,000 Gaelic settlers immigrated to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island during this period, the last ship arriving in 1840.
In 1812 Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk of Scotland obtained 300,000 km² to build a colony at the fork of the Red River, in modern-day Manitoba-one of Canada's 10 provinces. When he unexpectedly inherited the estate, he used his money and political connections to purchase land and settle Scottish farmers in Prince Edward Island in 1803 and Upper Canada in 1804. Douglas asked the British government for a land grant in the Red River Valley, a part of Rupert's Land. Centered around the Red River of the North, these lands had previously been under the control of Great Britain. Selkirk had become interested in the concept of settling the area after reading Alexander Mackenzie's 1801 book on his adventures in exploring what is today the west of Canada. MacKenzie was born in Stornoway on the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. In 1774 his family moved to New York, and then to Montréal in 1776 during the American Revolution. Although he ended up discovering the Arctic Ocean, he named the river "Disappointment River" as it did not lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska as he had expected. The river was later renamed in his honour. He brought 70 Scottish settlers, many of them monolingually Gaelic-speaking, and established a community together with French-speaking Métis traders.
This land became part of the U.S. when the second article of the 1818 treaty declared the 49th parallel to be the official border between the U.S. and Canada up to the Rocky Mountains. This borderline was extended to the Pacific Ocean in 1846 under the Oregon Treaty. In 1821, the North West Company of Montreal and the Hudson's Bay Company merged, with a combined territory that was further extended by a license to the watershed of the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Eventually there were the aboriginal settlements of Ojibwa, Cree, Dene, Sioux, Mandan, and Assiniboine peoples, along with other tribes that entered the area to trade.
The Red River flows northward through the Red River Valley, forming much of the border between the U.S. states Minnesota and North Dakota, and then flowing into Manitoba, Canada. Measured from the Sheyenne River, it is 877 km long, falling 70 m on its trip towards Lake Winnipeg, spreading into the vast deltaic wetland known as Netley Marsh. It was a key river in the early settlement of Canada, notably being home to the Red River Colony that later became Winnipeg-the Gateway to the West. It is formed at Wahpeton, North Dakota and Breckenridge, Minnesota by the confluence of the Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail rivers. The Red River passes Fargo, North Dakota, Moorhead, Minnesota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, East Grand Forks, Minnesota, then enters the province of Manitoba in Canada. That province's capital, Winnipeg, is at its confluence with the Assiniboine River. The river drains into Lake Winnipeg and is part of the Hudson Bay watershed. The Red River flows across the flat, former bottom of the ancient glacial Lake Agassiz. The colony was never very successful, but changes during the development of Canada in the 1800s led to the colony forming the basis of what is today Manitoba.
Manitoba borders Saskatchewan to the west, Ontario to the east, Nunavut and the Hudson Bay to the north, and the American states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south. Most of Manitoba's inhabited south, near or in Lake Winnipeg (the tenth-largest fresh water lake in the world), lies within the prehistoric bed of Glacial Lake Agassiz-formed by glacial action. Winnipeg is known as the Gateway to the West. Agassiz lake drained at various times south into the Minnesota River (part of the Mississippi River system), into the Great Lakes, or west through the Yukon Territory and Alaska. There was a major outbreak of Lake Agassiz in about 11000 BC drained through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. The Red River Valley agricultural region also exists because of the silt that sank to the bottom of the lake. The Hudson Bay coast is the lowest at sea level. Manitoba is one of the sunniest places in Canada and North America.
Red River of the North, flowing north through Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba into Lake Winnipeg, finding its outlet to the Sea, via the Nelson River, at Hudson Bay. The pancake-flat Red River Valley is a remnant of glacial Lake Agassiz. Red River of the South, a.k.a the Red River (Mississippi watershed), a Mississippi tributary flowing between Texas and Oklahoma. It rises in two branches (forks) in the Texas Panhandle and flows east along the border of Texas and Oklahoma, and briefly between Texas and Arkansas. At Fulton, Arkansas, the river turns south into Louisiana to empty into the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers. Red River (Kentucky), in Kentucky's Red River Gorge.