RED RIVER Rebellion

The Red River Rebellion (or the Red River Resistance, Red River uprising, or First Riel
Rebellion) was the sequence of events that led up to the 1869 establishment of a provisional
government by the Métis leader Louis Riel and his followers at the Red River Colony, in what is now
the Canadian province of Manitoba. For a period it had been a territory called Rupert's Land under
control of the Hudson's Bay Company.
The Resistance was the first crisis the new federal government faced following Canadian
Confederation in 1867. The Canadian government had bought Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay
Company in 1869 and appointed an English-speaking governor, William McDougall. He was
opposed by the French-speaking, mostly Métis inhabitants of the settlement. Before the land was
officially transferred to Canada, McDougall sent out surveyors to plot the land according to the
square township system used in the Public Land Survey System. The Métis, led by Riel, prevented
McDougall from entering the territory. McDougall declared that the Hudson's Bay Company was no
longer in control of the territory and that Canada had asked for the transfer of sovereignty to be
postponed. The Métis created a provisional government, to which they invited an equal number of
Anglophone representatives. Riel negotiated directly with the Canadian government to
establish Manitoba as a province.
Meanwhile, Riel's men arrested members of a pro-Canadian faction who had resisted the provisional
government. They included an Orangeman named Thomas Scott. Riel's government tried and
convicted Scott, and executed him for threatening to murder Louis Riel.[1] Canada and the Assiniboia
provisional government soon negotiated an agreement. In 1870, the national legislature passed
the Manitoba Act, allowing the Red River Colony to enter Confederation as the province of Manitoba.
The Act also incorporated some of Riel's demands, such as the provision of separate French
schools for Métis children and protection for the practice of Catholicism.
After reaching an agreement, Canada sent a military expedition to Manitoba to enforce federal
authority. Now known as the Wolseley Expedition (or Red River Expedition), it consisted of
Canadian militia and British regular soldiers led by Colonel Garnet Wolseley. Outrage grew in
Ontario over Scott's execution, and many eastern folks demanded that Wolseley's expedition arrest
Riel for murder and suppress what they considered to be rebellion.[1] Riel peacefully withdrew
from Fort Garry the day the troops arrived. Warned by many that the soldiers would harm him, and
denied amnesty for his political leadership of the rebellion, Riel fled to the United States. The arrival
of troops marked the end of the Rebellion.