Talk:Pemmican War

Detail

While I agree with the AFC reviewer that this seems too detailed, I don't think that is a valid reason for declining the article and leaving it to be deleted under G13. Too much detail is not really a valid reason for AFC decline and is a lot easier to fix than no detail. SpinningSpark 13:47, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Original research / first person

Parts of this article are obviously original research as the writer directly states things like "in my opinion" etc. Definitely needs a through cleanup job. Parts are at times too detailed and the article even describes the same events twice over in some places. Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to do the required editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.196.191.12 (talk) 14:46, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

POV

I have been attempting to edit this to change the tense from present to past as well as clean up some simple style errors, but I've also been running across some POV issues as well. The Pemmican War, and its culmination in the Battle of Seven Oaks, was a series of mistrusts, misunderstandings, competitions, disputes, and skirmishes between the Hudson Bay Company and the North West Company, in which both were at fault to varying degrees. I recognize some of the narrative here as coming from an anglophile history written early in the 20th century (it may have been copied from that) which blamed the North West Company and Métis almost exclusively, and held the Hudson Bay Company almost entirely blameless. This needs more than a grammar cleanup; it needs to have a POV cleanup. I'm not a regular enough contributor to know the intricacies of that part of Wikipedia. Can someone please mark this article as having a POV dispute?

-- Couillaud 18:44, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Added POV tag. -- Kayoty (talk) 22:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The HBC Charter appears to include the Selkirk Settlement yet when the charter was written the area was part of New France. If so then the charter was not violated by the NWC who had simply reopened the old voyageurs routes.-- Kayoty (talk) 22:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

John Pritchard's book published in 1819 (view here) which is quoted in several places on the page is possibly the source of the 'anglophile history' you are referring to. The book is obviously anti-NWC and pro-HBC and has probably been used as a primary source for many of the histories written later.-- Kayoty (talk) 07:19, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I remember John Pritchard. A North West Company employee, François-Firmin Boucher, wrote a response that same year to Mr. Pritchard's pamphlet, which addressed almost exactly the same chronological events ([but from the POV of the NWC. Boucher's pamphlet was titled François Firmin Boucher à Ses Concitoyens ( obviously in French). Although Pritchard identifies a different NWC employee whose intervention helped spare his life at the Battle of Seven Oaks, Boucher states he was that person. Boucher was arrested, tried, and acquitted of murder charges related to Seven Oaks on the word of Selkirk, and Pritchard testified against him. I should confess a small amount of bias in this issue, being a great-great grandson of Boucher.

I wish there were a better copy of Pritchard's book. The one we have cited here looks like it was a bad OCR scan without any corrections, and is nearly impossible to read in places. -- Couillaud 16:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

And there is. This might be a better view of Pritchard's book. Should have thought of this first. -- Couillaud 16:21, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

On reading a little of the Pritchard and Boucher accounts certain passages might need to be removed or rewritten or explained like the following:

• By doing so, Macdonell was invoking the rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company Royal Charter, which the NWC was clearly violating.[7]
• The NWC later testifies that they found the furs in some abandoned boats. While a prisoner at Qu’Appelle, Pierre Pambrun observes the Nor’Wester’s preparations for their attack on the Red River Colony. He writes: 'I remained a prisoner at Qu’Appelle...I saw a blacksmith, by the name of Gardepie...making lances, and daggers; also repairing guns and pistols for the different half-breeds then going upon the expedition for the destruction of the colony...During their stay at Qu’Appelle, their whole amusement was in shooting at the mark, singing war songs, practicing with their lances and telling each other how they would kill the English – meaning the settlers – and they also often told me they were going to kill them like rabbits.'[14]
• John Pritchard recorded what happened next: 'With the exception of myself, no quarter was given to any of us. The knife, axe, or ball, put a period to the existence of the wounded, and on the bodies of the dead were practiced all those horrible barbarities that characterize the inhuman heart of the savage. From what I saw, and from what I have been told, I do not suppose that more than one-fourth of our party were mortally wounded when they fell, but were most inhumanly butchered Afterwards.'[16]

-- Kayoty (talk) 18:41, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Removed the following sections and reworded some sentences:

1. By employing soldiers and having them wear their military uniforms, the NWC was attempting to give off an air of military authority. However, Miles Macdonell wrote that: “Every well informed person looked upon this as a self-created appointment, at most a North West Company trick, but it had a very considerable effect upon the lower class of people.”
2. The wounded, with their caps in their hands, begged for mercy. John Pritchard recorded what happened next: “With the exception of myself, no quarter was given to any of us. The knife, axe, or ball, put a period to the existence of the wounded, and on the bodies of the dead were practiced all those horrible barbarities that characterize the inhuman heart of the savage. From what I saw, and from what I have been told, I do not suppose that more than one-fourth of our party were mortally wounded when they fell, but were most inhumanly butchered Afterwards.”
3. However, this was an empty threat, as few Indians joined them from the East and the local Indians were always friendly to Red River despite NWC efforts to “Stir them up.” John Pritchard, the former Nor’Wester and now Red River settler stated: “The colonists were threatened with hostility from the Indians, but falsely, because the Indians were always found friendly to us.”

Not yet completed.-- Kayoty (talk) 08:14, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

While I applaud User Kayoty's efforts to clean up this article, I am becoming more and more convinced that it would be better to abandon it and rewrite it with a more diversified set of viewpoints as sources. It appears in its original form to have been cut and pasted from another source -- its first edit was more than 12,000 words (has anyone here ever written a 12,000-word Wikipedia article from scratch in one go?), and contained several instances like "'. . . by every means within our power'20", the footnote ref having been copied in as well, without any formatting. While the topic is notable, the article itself appears to have been copied almost verbatim from another source, and the source itself was biased. The disputes between HBC and NWC had a cultural overtone between Anglo society and French and First Nation, and the dispute's history was written almost exclusively from the Anglo standpoint. This article takes that POV because it was drawn from a source with that POV. Opinion? -- Couillaud 16:39, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Poorly written ambiguous text

In the section "Attacks on the colony and the burning of Fort Douglas", the clause "...and John Warren was nearly killed when his wall gun bursts" makes no sense. I cannot fix it because I don't know what it's supposed to mean. Acwilson9 (talk) 07:30, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Conflicting Information

In the section about the Battle of Seven Oaks, the battle is said to have gone on for 25 minutes. However, in the Battle of Seven Oaks article, the battle is said to have gone on for 15 minutes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.48.91.176 (talk) 00:30, 27 February 2018 (UTC)