Most portions of the new world have grown from additions from the military, who have for some reason or other come to them. So it was in Red River settlement. In 1846 the 6th Regiment of foot, some three hundred and fifty strong, was sent out by way of Hudson's Bay under Col. Crofton, in connection with the Oregon question, then disturbing the relations of Great Britain and the United States. Few of the regiment remained in the country. The troublous state of affairs in Recorder Thom's time induced the company to send out a number of pensioners and settlers who should be settled near the fort, and be useful in time of emergency as police. It was in 1848 that Col. Caldwell, with fifty-six non-commissioned officers and men, of whom forty-two were married and had families, came out by way of Hudson's Bay, each man being promised twenty acres of land and each sergeant forty. It was after their arrival that the Sayer emeute took place.
The nucleus of 150 Kildonan settlers in 1816 had with it a few Metis, already settled down, but there was a need for a settlement for the heart of the vast fur territories. The North-west Company, ever opposed to settlement, we learn from Harmon's book, had a scheme on foot at this time to establish a native settlement on Rainy River, and had the money subscribed for an educational institution there. A settlement having been once established on Red River, many flocked to it. Thus it was that in ten years after the death of Governor Semple there were of Highlanders, De Meurons, Swiss, French voyageurs, Metis, and Orkney half-breeds, not less than fifteen hundred settlers. It was certainly a motley throng. The Rev. Mr. West the first missionary, tells us that he distributed copies of the Bible in English, Gaelic, German, Danish, Italian, and French, and they were all gratefully received in this polyglot community. Though the colony lost by desertion, as we have seen, yet it continued to gain by the addition of retiring Hudson's Bay Company officers and servants, who took up land, as allowed by the company, in strips along the river, after the Lower Canadian fashion, for which they paid small sums. There were in many cases no deeds, simply the registration of the name in the company's register. A man sold his lot for a horse, and it was a matter of chance whether the registration of the change in the lot took place or not. This was certainly a mode of transferring land free enough to suit the greatest radical. The land reached as far out from the river as could be seen by looking under a horse, say two miles, and back of this was the limitless prairie, which became a species of common where all could cut hay, and where herds could run unconfined.