Pembina
Flintlock Guns
I am trying to figure out if the story of Pembina is important to Governor Simpson’s visit to Red River in winter 1823-24. I found the story in one of the two biographies written about Simpson, and it said this:
In 1823, Simpson was faced with some alarming news. The Yankton Sioux were planning an attack on Red River Settlement from United States. The attack had been provoked by a half-Sioux man named Joseph Rainville, who was demanding payment for some furs.
Although the threat of an attack “struck both the Indians and settlers at Red River with consternation,” Simpson “could not get a man to Volunteer.” So he rounded up a rag-tag “army” that included missionary John West, the seventeen-year-old artist Peter Rindisbacher, and a few Company men. As Simpson explained: “I at length prevailed upon 30 hired Meurons who together with Gentlemen and servants amounted to about 50 in all [who] accompanied me well prepared for the worst. With this small contingent, Simpson set out from Red River for the Pembina post, fifty miles to the south in American territory.
Please notice the date: it is incorrect. According to other sources I have, Governor Simpson spent the winter of 1823-24 at Red River, and this incident would have occurred in spring 1824. Anyway, let us continue:
The De Meurons, mentioned above, were a Regiment of Swiss soldiers raised in 1781, who were transferred to the British army and served in India until October 1806. They moved to England and in August 1813 were sent to Lower Canada. The regiment was disbanded in 1816, and more than half of the 640 soldiers elected to stay in Canada as settlers. (As ex-soldiers, they got free land.) Some were immediately recruited by Lord Selkirk for his expedition to Red River, and those that travelled there stayed there.
So, first, what fort are we talking about when we say “Pembina?” Fort Daer was the HBC fort on the lower Red River where the Pembina River flowed in from the west. It was built by Governor Macdonnell in September 1812, and named for Lord Selkirk, who also held the title of Baron Daer. The North West Company had a post near by, called Pembina House, apparently just across the Pembina River from the HBC post. When the HBC constructed their post, they thought it was in British territory. It was not, and when the boundary line was surveyed they learned it was well south of the line. The HBC may have moved it a little north and closer to the boundary line (the records I have are unclear), but when all this happened, the fort was apparently still in American territory.
So, when Governor Simpson arrived in Red River to spend the winter of 1823-24 there, the rumours were that the Red River Settlement was going to be attacked by Americans from the south, led by two men: Joseph Rainville, and a Dakota warrior Chief named Wanata, whose Sioux name meant “The Animal who Charges.”
So, who is Joseph Rainville? From an online article titled: “Joseph Renville of Lac qui Parle,” he is the possible mixed-blood son of another Joseph Rinville (a voyageur with the NWC in 1775) and his Sioux wife. Rainville (Renville) became a leader among the Sioux, and fought with the British during the War of 1812. After the war, he traded for the HBC at the head of the Red River (Fort Daer/Pembina). “He remained with this company until 1822, when he became ‘dissatisfied with their employ.’ Evidently, he left under conditions not wholly creditable to himself, for many years later the Hudson’s Bay Company reminded him that it had lost money through his operations at Pembina.”
So, Joseph Rainville was in charge of Fort Daer in 1822, when this story begins. Another gentleman worked in the Lower Red River district: an Irishman named Andrew McDermot, born in 1790 or so. McDermot joined the HBC and arrived at York Factory August 26, 1812, on the ship Robert Taylor. “A mutiny broke out when the steerage passengers protested about insufficient provisions, and McDermot signed their manifesto. There were further problems when discontent developed between Irish passengers and a party of settlers sent out by Lord Selkirk. McDermot learned to speak Scot’s Gaelic from Scottish Highlanders during the two-month voyage.” The Irish also spoke Gaelic, but it was different from the Scot’s version, and so that is how he learned to speak Scottish Gaelic in such a short time! And the fact that he did speak Gaelic is, I believe, a part of the story.
At least, I think he’s part of the story. Anyway, in 1821, Andrew McDermot was at the Thieving River post somewhere in Manitoba in 1821-22, and at Netley Creek, Lower Red River district, to 1823. Netley Creek Post was in the Gimli region, on the western shores of Lake Winnipeg. After serving at these two posts he was put in charge of the Pembina post until he retired in 1824. So he was part of this event, and it was probably he who sent messages north from Pembina, to warn Governor Simpson of the rumoured visit by the Dakota Sioux chief, Wanata.
Obviously, I have a few questions about what I have been able to put together here. When Simpson arrived at Red River in winter 1823-24, he met McDermot and was impressed with his efficiency and knowledge (as well as his ability to speak the Gaelic language.) McDermot told Simpson he was going to retire at the end his contract in 1824. When the post was closed down, he came north to Red River with Simpson and his men. As you can see, knowing the correct dates makes quite a difference to the story.
So, Who else was there?
The missionary John West was there and a member of the party that went south to Pembina. Born in 1778, he was 44 years old when he came to Red River. He was a part of Governor Simpson’s expedition south to Pembina, and we know that because he wrote about it in his book, The Substance of a Journal during a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America. On April 5, [it appears to be 1822??? which is absolutely the wrong year!] John West wrote:
One of the chief officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company arrived, and gave us the welcome promise …that the Colony should receive some wheat to sow from the Company’s Post at Bas la Riviere, on Lake Winepeg [Winnipeg], where there is a good farm, and the crops had escaped the ravages of the locusts. When cheered by this prospect, the information reached us, that a party of Sioux Indians were on their way to the Settlement. As their intentions in visiting us were not known, and being apprehensive that more blood would be shed by the Saulteaux if they came down to Fort Douglas, it was resolved that two boats should be manned to prevent if possible their proceeding any farther than Pembina. It was far better to present an imposing force to them on the borders of the colony, than to suffer them to come down amongst us, where we should have been completely in their power, in our scattered habitations. At the request of the chief officer I accompanied the boats, and set off with him for the Company’s post at Pembina, about the middle of May. We arrived on the Friday, and soon after divine service on the Sunday morning the Sioux Indians were seen marching over the plains, with several colours flying towards the Colony Fort, which was immediately opposite to that of the Company….
So, there were two forts there: one for the Colony, and one for the HBC. Although he does not say so, I presume the chief officer was Simpson himself. I am also happy to learn that this incident happened in April and May of whatever year (certainly not 1822), and not in winter-time, as I had thought. But the Sioux: The leader of these Sioux was Wanata, a member of the Cut Head band of Yanktonai Dakota Sioux. As a child he had seen his father, Red Thunder, welcome both British and French trappers and traders into his territory. Wanata fought for the British in the War of 1812, where he got his name of “Rushing Man,” or “Charger.” He went to England and was introduced to the King, and returned to America sometime around mid-1816. On his return he discovered his father had been killed by the Chippewas, and he travelled north to Pembina to avenge his father’s death. He destroyed the Chippewa Band there.
But this happened seven or eight years earlier. In the middle of May of the year that the HBC men learned about the potential attack, Simpson set off for Pembina with 50 men, including missionary John West, and artist Peter Rindisbacher (who clerked in one of the HBC stores to help his family.) Peter’s father had come to Red River as one of the De Meuron soldiers, so Peter must have joined this expedition for the extra pay he would receive. And so, let us continue with John West’s story of Wanata’s approach to the Pembina Post.
As soon as they [the Sioux] had entered the fort they placed two sentinels at the gate…Many of them were of remarkably fine stature, and well-proportioned, but more formed for agility than strength. Their countenances were stamped with a fierce and barbarous expression, and being all armed with either long knives, tomahawks, guns or bows, they soon encircled and formed a guard for the Chief of their party. After a short time, they became very restless, and searched every corner and outhouse of the Fort, under the suspicion that some treacherous attack might be made upon them…Liquor was given them at both posts; and as I was standing within the stockades of that of the Company, at eight o’clock in the evening, a Chief of the party named Wanaton came in apparently intoxicated, and snatching a gun from an Indian who stood near him, he fired it with ball in a manner that indicated some evil design.
That night the Sioux murdered an Assiniboine man who had come to visit them, and took his scalp. West, who did not really know what was going on, said that afterwards they danced while carrying all their weapons. Other reports say that after the murder the Indigenous men all rode away from the fort. But the murder of the Assiniboine man, and the dancing, apparently occurred after Governor Simpson had addressed Wanata and Rainville: It is reported that Simpson stood before Wanata and Rainville “in his best London suit and top hat, guns and pistols incongruously strapped across his barrel chest, surrounded by his rag-tag crew,” author Dale T. Lahey wrote in his biography, George Simpson: Blaze of Glory. “We can imagine, as he usually did in his talks with the Natives, that Simpson minced no words and spelled out consequences. He could have drawn a line in the sand, and perhaps did — in this case the forty-ninth parallel, on which they were standing, which separated the United States from British North America. That is your side, he might have said, the American side; this side is our side, the British side, and we will kill you if you dare to attack us on our side.”
In fact, Simpson harangued the Sioux, and Wanata and Rainville understood him, because it was an Indigenous tradition borrowed from the First Nations people themselves. As Lahey said, “This was talk that Wanata could understand, and he, like Rainville, backed down ‘with assurances of their most perfect amity toward the Company and Colony’… The “peppery little Hudson’s Bay Company official,” as one writer described him, was left holding the field.”
It was not so easy. Wanata was both enraged and intoxicated when he killed and scalped the Assiniboine man shortly after hearing what Simpson had to say. Simpson departed Pembina, closing down the post permanently and moving it north to Red River. The closing of the Pembina Post meant that the HBC would lose the furs that flowed north across the boundary line. But Simpson had befriended Chief Trader Andrew McDermot, who was at the time in charge of Pembina. McDermot intended to set up on his own, and Simpson knew he would do well. In 1824, McDermot became a store-keeper and supplied the Red River settlers with goods imported from the United States as well as from England. Simpson also convinced the London Committee to grant McDermot a license to trade for furs and resell them at a profit to the Company. It is probable that furs that would otherwise have gone south to the American traders now flooding into the territory south of the boundary line were traded in McDermot’s store instead, thus ending up in HBC hands.
So that is what I have on this story, and it is not an easy story to research and write — particularly when the dates are arguing with me. I have to decide if it is important enough for the book. Some stories need to be cut (as always), and perhaps this will be one of them. But not yet. I will wrestle with the story until it works, and perhaps, with luck, I will find the magic answer. But I do not have it yet.
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2026. All rights reserved.