- From the Red River Settlement to Manitoba (1812—70)
- Maps
- The Earl of Selkirk: The Colony’s Founder
- An Arduous Task, Marked by a Private War (1812—21)
- The Métis
- Indigenous Peoples
- Colonial Administration
- Maintaining Order and the Colony’s Defence
- Of Fur and Wheat: Subsistence and the Economy
- From Canoes to Railways: Transportation
- Life in Red River
- Missions and Religious Life
- Education, Health, and Social Assistance
- Arts and Culture
- The Press
- Intellectual and Scientific Life
- Winnipeg: The Emergence of an Urban Core
- Debating the Status of the Colony (1850—70)
- The Red River Rebellion and the Creation of Manitoba, 1869—70
- Suggested Readings on the Métis
Life in Red River
The often-difficult living conditions pushed several settlers to voice their discontent to their leaders. Some, like the Swiss painter Peter RINDISBACHER and his family, left the colony permanently:
“Only a few paintings… document the increasingly desperate plight of Rindisbacher’s own people. For the most part artisans, they were totally unfit to face the privations of a farming life at Red River. Man-made and natural disasters mocked their clumsy efforts to eke out a living. They began trickling south. In the spring of 1826 a devastating flood combined with an infestation of grub-worms discouraged the remaining die-hards, among them Pierre Rindisbacher. With his family and other Swiss settlers he left Red River on 11 July 1826 and settled at a place called Gratiot’s Grove (near Darlington, Wis.).”
The biographies that appear in the following lists provide additional information on what everyday life in Red River was like between 1812 and 1870.