Volume 1

DIVISION OF THE BRIGADE AT THE FORKS. 45
prevented from sleeping by the howling the Indians and
their dogs kept up.
Au£;. igi/i. We began early this morning to unpack, assort,
and divide the goods, one-half being intended for Portage
la Prairie on the Assiniboine, and the remainder for Red
river. This employed us most of the day, during which we
also settled the men, delivered the baggages, and attended
to the Indians, who were still drinking. At twelve o'clock,
Mississippian waters about the heads of Crow Wing and Minnesota rivers,
separates Minnesota from North Dakota, enters Manitoba at 49° N., and keeps
on N. through the latter to Lake Winnipeg. Our name translates F. Riviere
Rouge, given by 1740 or earlier, and that translates Miscousipi of the aborigines;
but whether the implication be the " red " of the soil, or of the water, or of the
blood that had been spilled in these parts, may long exercise our wits to discover.
Beltrami inclines to the view implied by his term Riviere Sanglante,
Bloody r., 1823. The full form of the name is Red River of the North, in
distinction from six or seven great Red rivers in the United States, besides
many little ones. Turning now to the other fork—the Assiniboine, as it is now
called in Canada, and as I shall uniformly render the name in this work, though
Assinniboin is commoner with us : This was the Red r. of various writers,
both before and during Henry's time. Thus Thompson's MS. of 1797-98, now
before me, repeatedly speaks of Red r. , meaning the Assiniboine—though his
usual name was Stone Indian r. When such double employ of " Red " was in
vogue, the present Red r. used to be qualified as Lower Red r., while the
Assiniboine was called Upper Red r., and such were their respective official
designations in the N. W. Co. An early, if not the first, distinctive name of
the Assiniboine was given in 1738 by Verendrye, who called it Riviere St.
Charles, thus canonizing his friend and patron, Charles, Marquis de Beauharnois,
governor and lieutenant-general of New France ;
though, when he was
on the spot where Henry now is, Sept. 24th, 1738, he called it La Fourche des
Assiliboiles, Fork of the Assiniboines. Among uncounted, if not countless,
forms of the latter word may be here noted a series with initial O instead of A
;
these are generally connected with or traceable to Lord Selkirk, who speaks
of the Ossiniboyne r. and District of Ossiniboia. Bell, /. c, p. 5, cites a
curious verbality due to
one Lieut. Chappel, 1814, quoted as saying that " the
infant colony [Selkirk's] is called by his Lordship Osna Boia, two Gaelic words,
signifying Ossian's town, from the resemblance between that and the Indian
name of Red river—Asnaboyne." Bell humorously remarks upon this that it
was probably not an attempt to prove that the Assiniboines were originally
Scotchmen ! (Compare Osnaburg, actual name of various places, and recall
Assiniboia, official designation of the lately created district of the Canadian
Northwest.) We shall learn much of both the large rivers here noted as we
follow Henry.