Volume 1

296 PINE RIVER—OLD PINE FORT.
they go any length to obtain, either by theft, pillage, or
murder.
At daybreak we saddled, and were going off,
July I2th.
when the old Indian began such a tale of woe as to induce
us once more to take him up on horseback. My two men
walked by turns until we came to Riviere aux Epinettes,
when, finding the day far advanced, and being anxious to
reach Riviere la Souris before night, we determined to
leave the old gentleman behind, notwithstanding his
bitter
complaints. We gave him provisions and tobacco for five
days, and I promised to send somebody to meet him with
a horse to-morrow. He pretended to be so ill that he
could only move on his hands and knees, and even then
not without much grunting and moaning; he wished us to
make him a pair of crutches to enable him, as he said, to
crawl to the water to drink. But time would not permit us
to do more for him than leave him some water in a bark
dish, and the brook was not more than 100 yards off, where
he could get plenty. At one o'clock we crossed Wattap "
river, and came to old Fort des Epinettes, where we
stopped to refresh ourselves and rest our horses. Here we
had an establishment for several years, but from the
scarcity of wood, provisions, and other circumstances, it was
abandoned, and built
higher up river, where the settlement
is now, at Riviere la Souris. The country hereabouts is
very hilly and rough, with deep valleys, in which grow
" Henry's R. aux Epinettes and W^attap r. are the same stream, now Pine r.
or cr. ; in Bell's paper printed Wa-wap. Apinette is Canadian French for
certain coniferous trees, whose sharp leaves we call "needles." The small
stream falls into the Assiniboine from the N. or right hand going up, 15 m. or
more by the road below the mouth of Mouse r. The Assiniboine here makes
a large loop S., and the road leaves it for a more direct course. The mouth of
Pine cr. is in the N. W. section of Tp. 8, R. xiii, W. of the princ. merid.;
there is no named place in the immediate vicinity, but it is nearly on a direct
line, 12 m. S. of sta. Melbourne of the main C. P. Ry., and 12 m. N. of sta.
Glenboro of the S. W. branch of that railway. Here, on the Assiniboine. N.
bank, W. of Pine cr., stood Fort des Epinettes, or Fort des Pins, oftener
called Pine fort, built 1785, abandoned 1794. Harmon viewed the remains
Saturday, June ist, 1805 : Journal, p. 139.