The action of Governor Miles Macdonell in the beginning of 1814, in forbidding the export of food from Rupert's Land and in interfering with the liberty of the traders, Indians and half-breeds, who had regarded themselves as outside of law, and as free as the wind of their wild prairies, produced an open and out-spoken dissent from every class.
The Nor'-Westers took time to consider the grave step of interrupting trade which Governor Miles Macdonell had taken.

Immediate action was impossible.

It was four hundred miles and more from the Colony to the great emporium of the fur trade on Lake Superior.

The annual gathering of the Nor'-Westers was held at Grand Portage, the terminus of a road nine miles long, built to avoid the rapids of the Pigeon River which flows into Lake Superior some thirty or forty miles southwest of where Fort William now stands.

This concourse was a notable affair.