The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC) had initially exploited different territories: the HBC took northern Huronia, Hudson Bay, and the land from the bay’s western shore to the Rocky Mountains, while the NWC took the region lying between Lake Superior and the Rockies. In 1810 Thomas Douglas, 5th earl of Selkirk, became the major shareholder of the HBC. Selkirk was a Scottish philanthropist who felt that emigration was the most reasonable response to enclosure, which in Scotland was causing the precipitous eviction and impoverishment of literally thousands of farm families. He arranged to have the HBC provide nearly 120,000 square miles (approximately 310,000 square km) for settlement in and around the Red River valley of present-day Manitoba and North Dakota. The area was referred to as Assiniboia, named after the Assiniboine nation, which resided there.

The scheme was not well received by the established residents of the area. The population of Assiniboia was a heterogeneous mix of aboriginal and Euro-American individuals, essentially all of whom were engaged in the fur trade in one form or another. Members of the Métis nation were among the region’s most prominent residents—economically successful, numerous, and well-traveled. Their economy emphasized commercial hunting, trapping, fishing, trading, and cartage; by generally limiting farming to such labour as was required to meet subsistence needs, they preserved the habitat of the animals upon which the fur trade relied. Métis culture arose from the marriages of Indigenous women, who were most often Cree, to European traders, who were most often French or Scottish. In the early 19th century, some Métis identified most closely with their Indigenous heritage, some with their European heritage, and some with both equally. A fourth group saw themselves as members of a unique culture that drew from, but was independent of, those of their ancestors. Given that the first interethnic marriages had occurred some two centuries earlier and that new individuals were constantly admixing into Métis communities, each of these perspectives could be reasonably held.

A number of Métis were officers in the NWC; the HBC, however, eschewed hiring them (and all Indigenous individuals) for anything but the most basic labor. This rankled the Métis, many of whom supposed that Selkirk’s settlers and their intensive farming were meant to dispossess the residents of Assiniboia of their lands and livelihoods. The NWC shareholders encouraged these sentiments. The two companies’ dispute over control of the territory became quite heated; the NWC had a longer presence there, but both had trading posts in the region, and the crown’s grant of Rupert’s Land to the HBC seemed—to HBC shareholders, at least—to prove the superiority of the HBC claim.

In 1812 the first of the Selkirk settlers arrived at the Red River Settlement (near present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada). Additional immigrants arrived in succeeding years; they were often harassed, and in some cases their buildings were burned and their crops destroyed. Tensions between the NWC-Métis contingent and the HBC-settler contingent were compounded in the severe winter of 1815–16, which produced widespread starvation. When a group of NWC men, almost entirely Métis, attacked and captured an HBC supply convoy, the HBC-appointed governor of the colony led a group of some 20–25 troops to retaliate. The NWC men killed 20 of this group in an engagement known as the Seven Oaks Massacre (1816). Many historians credit this event with fostering the unified Métis identity that later proved to be a key element in shaping the Canadian West and that continues to exist today.

In 1818 the Canadian courts, packed with judges who were NWC shareholders and supporters, ordered Selkirk to pay the NWC a very large settlement. The animosity between the rival companies was not resolved until 1821, when the British government insisted that they merge. The resultant corporation retained the Hudson’s Bay Company name and many of its policies, including the use of discriminatory employment practices. Many Métis thus lost their primary employment as trappers, traders, and carters and began to move from the countryside into the Red River Settlement. Over the next several decades they made numerous petitions to the colonial and British governments requesting recognition of their status as an independent people, an end to the HBC monopoly, and colony status for Assiniboia, among other things. Their petitions were denied, although in some cases only after heated debate in the British Parliament.

Parliament granted Canada independence through the British North America Act (1867), legislation that included little acknowledgement of the concerns of the Métis or other aboriginal nations. Instead, Canada’s 1868 Act Providing for the Organisation of the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada and for the Management of Indian and Ordnance Lands (sometimes referred to as the first Indian Act, although an act by that name was not passed until 1876) defined the ways that the dominion government would relate to native nations, essentially codifying the colonial legislation that had been passed during the 1850s.

Britain’s Parliament also approved the transfer of Rupert’s Land from the HBC to Canada, to be effective December 1, 1869. Convinced that this would result in the seizure of their homes and land, the Métis formed a coalition through which they hoped to negotiate with the new dominion government. Led by Louis Riel, a young Métis who had studied law in Montreal, the coalition waded into a political morass that pitted an assortment of competing interests against one another. The parties included not only the Métis but also various First Nations groups, the Canadian Parliament, the HBC, and a variety of entities whose interests were diametrically opposed, such as Irish Catholic Fenians and Irish Protestant Orange Order members, French Canadian Catholics and British Canadian Protestants, and fur traders and farmers. The United States followed the proceedings closely, hoping to connect the lower 48 states with Alaska through the purchase or annexation of Rupert’s Land; the state of Minnesota even offered Canada $10 million for the territory.

In an attempt to ensure that their concerns were heard, Riel’s men prevented William McDougall, the commissioner of crown lands, from entering Assiniboia to implement the transfer of Rupert’s Land from the HBC to the dominion. A frustrated McDougall nevertheless executed the part of the proclamation eliminating HBC rule over the region, unwisely leaving it without an official government. Riel quickly emplaced a provisional government as allowed under law.

Soon after, in one of the communities governed by the Riel coalition, an Orangeman was tried for disturbing the peace; his trial, despite its legality, and subsequent execution created an uproar throughout Canada. Hoping to quell the situation, the Canadian Parliament quickly wrote and passed the Manitoba Act (1870). Among other provisions, it recognized the property claims of the area’s occupants and set aside 1,400,000 acres (some 565,000 hectares) for future Métis use. It also mandated legal and educational parity between the English- and French-speaking communities, as that had become the key political issue for most of the Canadian public.

The Numbered Treaties and the Second Riel Rebellion

The Red River crisis laid the groundwork for the Numbered Treaties, 11 in all, that were negotiated between 1871 and 1921. For the most part these involved the cession of Indigenous land in exchange for reserve areas and the governmental provision of annuities, including cash, equipment, livestock, health care, and public education, all in perpetuity. Leaders from all the involved parties generally felt it better to negotiate than to fight, as the human and financial costs of the conflicts in the western United States were well publicized at the time.

No aboriginal nation was able to negotiate everything it desired through the Numbered Treaties, although many Native leaders were successful in pushing the dominion well beyond its preferred levels of remuneration. In addition to their own negotiating skills, which were considerable, these leaders relied upon individuals who were trained to repeat discussions verbatim—a group whose talents were especially useful when the colonizers “forgot” important clauses of agreements. By the end of 1876, Treaties 1 through 6 had been negotiated by the nations of the southern reaches of present-day Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. A particularly interesting idea had been advocated by the Plains Cree leader Big Bear, who persuaded the leaders of other nations to join him in requesting adjoining reserves. Their request was denied on the grounds that it would create an indigenous nation within a nation, which had of course been exactly the goal Big Bear wished to achieve.

The Métis fared poorly during the implementation of the Manitoba Act and the Numbered Treaties despite their earlier role in instigating dominion consultation with Indigenous peoples in the Canadian West. Government assurances that Métis property claims in Manitoba would be recognized had been negated by the post hoc addition of development requirements—approximately 90 percent of Métis title requests were refused on the basis of insufficient improvements such as too few cultivated acres or housing that was deemed unsuitable. A large number moved to Saskatchewan, where the government insisted they file individual land claims as regular citizens. As an aboriginal nation, the Métis argued against this, noting that new block reserves should replace the land they had lost in Manitoba. From the perspective of the dominion, however, the matter was closed.

Even before the 1876 completion of Treaties 1–6, many members of the northern Plains nations were taking up farming and ranching. Most also continued to rely on bison for meat and for robes or finished hides, which had become very popular trade items. The Métis engaged in the same activities, and, while the resident tribes were not happy with the arrival of competitors, they and the Métis were generally sympathetic to each others’ human rights causes.

The bison robe trade peaked in the late 1870s. Consumers preferred the lush robes of young cows, and the hunting of animals in their prime reproductive years contributed heavily to the imminent collapse of the bison population. Even as bison became scarce, harvests failed, and for several years in the early 1880s starvation became a real possibility for many people. For Indigenous nations, these hardships were worsened by government agents who refused to fulfill their legal obligations to distribute annuities or who distributed only partial or substandard goods.

In 1884, at the suggestion of Big Bear, more than 2,000 people convened for a pan-tribal gathering. Although tribal leaders had been quietly meeting for years to arrange the scheduling of bison hunts, this was by far the largest indigenous gathering the Canadian Plains had seen. Government agents subsequently prohibited inter-reserve travel and began in earnest to use the withholding of food as a method of control.

Their actions ultimately precipitated a crisis. Late in 1884 Louis Riel arrived in Saskatchewan, having spent several years in exile in the United States. He attempted to engage the dominion government, advocating for colony status, a position supported by Big Bear’s pan-tribal alliance, the Métis, and local Euro-Americans alike. In early 1885 a few starving tribal members looted Euro-American storage facilities and convoys, provoking government retaliation. Big Bear and another Plains Cree leader, Poundmaker, were able to intercede before the resultant skirmishes became full-blown engagements, thus preventing the deaths of many settlers and Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers. Government troops and ordnance were quickly transported to the area, and within a few weeks Big Bear, Poundmaker, Riel, and other alliance leaders had surrendered. They were soon convicted of various crimes. Riel was executed for treason, and, although their actions had clearly saved many lives, Big Bear and Poundmaker were sentenced to prison, where their health was quickly broken; both died within two years. Although Treaties 7 through 11 remained to be negotiated, colonial conquest was complete in the most populated portions of western Canada.