Everything went wrong. Having crossed the Atlantic for about 3 months and getting stuck in the ice of Hudsons Strait for another three weeks, the band of Swiss emigrants had to row with great hardship up the Hayes River over some 6o portages, and cross Lake Winnipeg in its full length.
Arriving starved, exhausted, and deprived of their belongings at the Red River Settlement just before the snows, they were told that nothing had been prepared for them. Lodging and food was there none due to a plague of grasshoppers and floods that had destroyed the harvests of the previous four years.
The so-called Promised Land was bare of any prospect. Thoroughly embittered and disgusted, one family after the other headed south between 1821 and 1826, some alone, others in groups, hoping to reach present day Minnesota as their first refuge. But to get there they had to cross over some 350 miles of prairie, a veritable desert of uncharted trails and water holes, peopled by roving Sioux looking out for victims to scalp. How did they survive? Thats what the reader will find out by reading this dramatic document, which is illustrated by Peter Rindisbacher, the young artist who participated in this extraordinary venture.
About the author
Antoine de Courten, born in 1942, is a retired Swiss Army colonel. He is the author of several books in French about the destiny of individuals of note who played an important role in the troubled period of 1792-1814 in Europe. The material for his books is drawn from diaries, letters, memoranda, and original accounts, most of which are deposited in the archives of the de Courten and de Watteville families.
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