“Monroe remained in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company a number of years, raising a large family of boys and girls, most of whom are alive to-day. The oldest, John, is about seventy-five years of age, but still young enough to go to the Rockies near his home every autumn, and kill a few bighorn and elk, and trap a few beavers. The old man never revisited his home; never saw his parents after they parted with him at the Montreal docks. He intended to return to them for a brief visit some time, but kept deferring it, and then came letters two years old to say that they were both dead. Came also a letter from an attorney, saying that they had bequeathed him a considerable property, that he must go to Montreal and sign certain papers in order to take possession of it. At the time the factor of Mountain Fort was going to England on leave; to him, in his simple trustfulness Monroe gave a power of attorney in the matter. The factor never returned, and by virtue of the papers he had signed the frontiersman lost his inheritance. But that was a matter of little moment to him then. Had he not a lodge and family, good horses and a vast domain actually teeming with game wherein to wander? What more could one possibly want? “Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company, Monroe sometimes worked for the American Fur Company, but mostly as a free trapper, wandered from the Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone and from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg. The headwaters of the South Saskatchewan were one of his favorite hunting grounds. Thither in the early fifties he guided the noted Jesuit Father, De Smet, and at the foot of the beautiful lakes just south of Chief Mountain they erected a huge wooden cross and named the two bodies of water Saint Mary’s Lakes.” Here the Canada and United States boundary climbs the Rocky Mountains. “One winter after his sons John and François had married they were camping there for the season, the three lodges of the family, when one night a large war party of Assiniboins attacked them. The daughters Lizzie, Amelia and Mary had been taught to shoot, and together they made a brave resistance, driving the Indians away just before daylight, with the loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of them as he was about to let down the bars of the horse corral.