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The Meurons were engaged for this special service at Red River purpose, being promised, besides their plenty of liquor, tobacco, and provisions, pay at the rate of a dollar a day per man while they continued on this particular service. They were all armed, and and equipped; and were principally in their uniforms and with their military regimental caps. Williams had two small pieces of brass canon, these four pounders, with some swivels, which were brought from the Hudson's Bay, and, accompanied by his military banditti, and a number of the Hudson's Bay Clerks and servants, all armed, he arrived , about the 16^th or 17^th of June 1819, at the Grand Rapid, where they met M^r John Clarke, with two canoes of the Hudson's Bay Company, [and] coming from Athabasca. Charles Racette, an old free Canadian hunter, who had passed upwards of thirty years in the interior, and who, intending to come down to Canada, had a temporary lodge or hut at the foot of Grand Rapid describes their arrival as being with, "une grande barge chargée de canons, de fusils avec des bayonettes, de lances avec des manches de bois de cinq à cinq ou six pieds de longueur, & et d'autres armes," & d'a adding "que, voyant ces attrails militaires, il soupçonnait qu'ils venaient là pour quelque chose d’extraordinaire. Que M^r Williams

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