The Promised Land That Wasn't: A Settler's Warning from Assiniboia

The immigrants from Assiniboia who arrived in Spokane last night told a representative of the Spokesman-Review the story of the country they had left to seek homes in the state of Washington.

'The way immigrants are induced to go to the Canadian Northwest,' said one of the party, 'by the Dominion government agents is usually as follows: They find one or two families too deeply in debt to have any hopes of ever getting out. These they take with them on a visit of inspection to the district in which they are to locate the colony. Sufficient inducements are forthcoming to make it worth their while to return a highly favorable report, and through their aid a colony is organized as was ours at Aberdeen.

'Free transportation is furnished and everything you can think of in the way of assistance is promised. Each family is loaned $1,000 by the colonization company, from which three years' interest is deducted in advance, and this loan is secured by a lien on the settler's homestead taken by permission of the government. The loan is not paid in cash but in orders. Most of it is spent in buying implements and stock, but $100 is set aside to buy provisions enough to last a year.

'Now you are left to your own resources. You have no interest to pay for three years and no taxes except the district school tax. Then comes your first winter—seven long months. Where our colony was settled, near Yorktown on the Manitoba & Northwestern railroad, snow fell in October each year and lay till May. One year our fodder became exhausted near the end of April and we had to dig down through three feet of snow to uncover grass for the stock. All this, however, could be borne if it were not for the mosquitoes. In the spring before the snow goes it is fairly black with them, and in summer between them and the intense heat it is at most impossible for man or beast to thrive.

'Under these circumstances when the three years are up it is no wonder the colonist has nothing to pay his interest with. That was our case and it is the case of most we left behind us. There is nothing left to be done but to strike out for some new country where the conditions are more favorable.

'All I have to say of the portion of Assiniboia we are from is that its settlement will prove a complete failure, and that will be made clear within a year or two at the outside. When the truth becomes known the colonization companies now doing such a thriving business on paper will have nothing on their hands to show for their expenditure but a lot of worthless and abandoned homesteads. I can only account for their action on the ground that they are interested in the railroad company and endeavoring to make traffic for it by settling up the lands along its line of road. The scheme is bound to end in disaster, and the sooner the English people find it out the better for them.'