Volume 1

FORT AU BAS DE LA RIVIERE. 35
Aug. i/f-th. This morning I waited for my canoes, which
arrived at ten o'clock; when we loaded, embarked, and in
a short time arrived at the fort or establishment of Bas
de la Riviere Winipic,^' the general depot for provisions
which are brought from Red and Assiniboine rivers
every spring in long boats. These carry from lOO to 250
bags of provisions, of 90 pounds each.
Here we unloaded our canoes, and sent a party of men
over the river to the little fort for boats. At twelve
of passing ' ' the old house on the left " as he came down river, and then keeping
on a mile or so to the occupied post of his company. The situation was
thus approx. that of Fort Alexander, being about 4 m. above the mouth of the
river, and across it from the site of Fort Maurepas : see next note.
^* " Bas de la Riviere " has been notable in the annals of the fur-trade for
more than a century and a half. It was naturally a key position, on one of the
greatest waterways—the entrance of Winnipeg r. into Traverse bay of Lake
Winnipeg. It was only thrown out of the main line of travel when the
Canadian Pacific Ry. went through, further S., and Fort Alexander is still
maintained as a post of the H. B. Co., though no considerable settlement ha?
ever sprung up on the historic spot. The record of occupancy by the whites
goes back to 1734, when Verendrye built Fort Maurepas on the right bank of
the river near its mouth ; and named it, as he also had named the whole river,
in honor of Jean Frederic Phelippeaux, Comte de Maurepas, minister under
Louis XV. and Louis XVI., b. July gth, 1701, d. Nov. 21st, 1781, and in
trouble with the Pompadour about 1749. Verendrye himself was at his post
again Sept. 22d, 173S
; he calls it Fort Marpas, and says that he left in charge
M. de la Riviere and nine men : Rep. Canad. Arch., 1890, p. 7. When the
elder Henry came by, in Aug., 1775, the place was occupied by a large Cree
village, but nothing is said of any trading-house. In 1792 the site of Fort
Alexander was occupied by Toussaint Le Sieur, and we hear about this time
of "the Sieur's Fort," as it was once called : e. g., in J.
McDonnell's journal
of May 27th, 1793, in Masson, I. 1886, p. 291. This Le Sieur was in charge
at Fort Alexander in 1794 ; he is probably the same as one Le Sieur who
was in partnership with Simon Eraser in 1789 ; and we shall hear again of
Toussaint Le Sieur, as a clerk of the N. W. Co., in Henry's text. The
N. W. Co. house which Henry has reached was within some rods of Fort
Alexander, on the S. or left bank of the river. Thompson's MSS. of 1796
and later, speak of it as the Winnipeg House, avoiding the rather awkward
F. phrase which was then most current—Fort au Bas de la Riviere
was its usual form, as much as to say ' ' Down river " fort, by a sort of
adverbial construction. Harmon, who passed Bas de la Riviere two weeks
before Henry did, in 1800, says that the N. W. Co. and the H. B. Co.
"have each a fort," p. 46.