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North-West Rebellion of 1885 - Canadian History?

• Answer:

  Of those significant military engagements of the Rebellion which took place between Canadian forces and the Métis, led by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. This encounter became the only clear Métis victory. The only decisive victory for government forces was at the Battle of Batoche. Of the engagements in which bands of the Cree First Nation took part, the Frog Lake “Massacre” did not involve opposing forces. The Métis Resistance. After migrating from Manitoba to new communities along the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, following the Red River Uprising of 1870, the Métis found that once again they faced the same problems as they had in the old Red River settlement. Among other things, they feared the loss of their land as they watched surveyors imposing upon their long narrow river lots the Canadian township system which divided the land into squares. In June 1884 a delegation of Métis, led by Gabriel Dumont, traveled to Montana to persuade their former leader, Louis Riel, to return to the Saskatchewan District to help them present their grievances to the Canadian government. During the summer of 1884 and the spring of the following year, angry meetings were held throughout the District, both in Métis and White communities, where the settlers also voiced their grievances against the Canadian government. The unrest in Saskatchewan culminated in the creation by Riel on March 18, 1885, of a provisional government, centred in the community of Batoche. The first shots of the resistance were fired on March 26, 1885, in a field near the small community of Duck Lake, when a force of about 100 North-West Mounted Police and volunteers from Prince Albert, under the command of Inspector Lief Crozier, clashed with a Métis force led by Gabriel Dumont. When the smoke cleared, twelve policemen and volunteers as well as five Métis, including Isidore Dumont, Gabriel’s brother, lay dead, and the Métis in the District of Saskatchewan were in open rebellion. In response to the clash at Duck Lake, a column of Mounted Police was hastily dispatched northward from Regina to garrison the town of Prince Albert. The Métis army was structured as it had been since the days of the buffalo hunt: the captains of the hunt were in charge of ten soldiers each, and the most important of the captains assumed command of the whole force; the army was governed by rules laid down for each man to follow. As the first shots of the uprising were being fired, the commander of the Canadian militia, British general Sir Frederick Middleton, was on his way to the West to take command of the North-West Field Force, which was hurriedly being assembled in Manitoba and in eastern Canada. Military District 10, which was headquartered in Winnipeg, had responsibility for all military activity in Manitoba and the North-West Territories. The first of its units to be mobilized for the field force was the 90th Rifles of Winnipeg. On March 23, 1885, General Middleton and the advance party of 100 riflemen of the 90th left Winnipeg by train, bound for Qu’Appelle Station (then called Troy) in the District of Assiniboia, North-West Territories. It was there that Middleton first heard news of the Duck Lake encounter. On April 6, Middleton and his small force of westerners, now augmented by more infantry, artillery and cavalry from Winnipeg, and by Boulton’s Scouts from Russell, Manitoba, set out from the small town of Fort Qu’Appelle on a 200-mile journey northward to Batoche. The troops covered 20 miles a day, reaching the Humboldt telegraph station in a five-day march. On April 17 the column stopped at Clarke’s Crossing, on the South Saskatchewan River, to wait for the troops that had been sent from eastern Canada to catch up with them. There, Middleton split his force, now some 900 strong, into two groups and continued his advance northward along both banks of the river. On April 24, his troops experienced their first taste of battle: at Fish Creek, the Canadian militia suffered a severe setback at the hands of Gabriel Dumont’s sharpshooters. After the check at Fish Creek, an even more cautious General Middleton continued his advance to the Métis headquarters of Batoche. There, he began a four-day siege in which the Hudson’s Bay Company paddle wheeler Northcote, complete with one of his two Gatling guns and a seven-pound cannon, was employed against the Métis defenders. On May 12, 1885, the badly outnumbered Métis were finally overcome by Middleton’s troops after a short, sharp battle. A few days later, Louis Riel surrendered and Gabriel Dumont escaped to Montana. Louis Riel was brought to Regina, where he was tried for treason before Judge Hugh Richardson. He was found guilty on August 1, 1885, and on November 16 he was hanged at the Mounted Police barracks in Regina. His body was then taken to Winnipeg for burial.