Manitoba
The Keystone Province
Rupert's Land was a very generous slice of North America given by King Charles II to the fledgling Hudson's Bay Company at its inception in 1670. Its area was over seven million acres and it had a toe hold, if not an entire leg, in land that would one day be the Northwest Territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Québec, bits of the States, and more to the point for today's story, Manitoba. But apart from attempting to keep out rival fur operations such as the North West Company, the HBC wasn't doing overly much with its vast territory. That may have been due to their business model, which was to create large central forts, or Factories, where the Factor (the boss) would receive locals and trade with them for furs. This model meant that the factories had to be resupplied from elsewhere, and that meant by ship. And that meant that the HBC was pretty much a coastal endeavour.
Meanwhile, back in England, Charles had gone on to his reward and his little brother, James II (VII in Scotland) became the undisputed ruler of the kingdoms of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales (at the time a part of England). Even though he was Catholic, and his kingdoms were leaning towards Protestant. But he was the next in line of the blood royale, and divinely mandated to rule. In spite of what parliament thought. Which is why James suspended the parliaments of both England and Scotland and ruled by Personal Decree, which meant by Personal Whim. Anger at his tyranical approach to ruling brought the concepts of Absolutism (the monarch is above the law) and the Divine Right of Kings (the monarch was preordained by God to be ruler) into question, and resulted in the Glorious Revolution, which saw James deposed in favour of his protestant daughter Mary, and her husband Willem Hendrik, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel. Willem became King William III (II in Scotland) and returned the realm to the true faith (Protestant going on Calvinist). But from that point on, the parliament, and not the monarchy, was the real power base, which will come up again some day.
Of course, this whole affair had been a coup d'état, and there were those who wanted the rightful faith (Catholicism) and the rightful king back. In 1745 that would have been one James Francis Edward Stuart. James is Jacobus in Latin, and so being a Jacobite meant you wanted the senior branch of the Stuarts, to wit, James, back in charge. One of the more outspoken Jacobites was James' son Charles, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, who instigated the Bliadhna Theàrlaich, the Year of Charles, known to some as the Jacobite Rebellion of '45. This started in Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands before progressing to Edinburgh and the Battle of Prestonpans (Gladsmuir). Riding the wave of these victories, the Scottish Jacobites decided to link up with the English Jacobites and invade England. Meanwhile, the French, who had historical ties to the Stuarts but not the upjumped Hanovers, were helping out with weapons, a few soldiers, and on-and-off promises of an invasion. Of course, the Stuart uprising was brutally squashed; Episcopalian and Catholic meeting houses were burned and Jacobites were executed, left to die in prison awaiting trial, transported to the penal colonies, or, in rare circumstances, pardoned. This left Scotland in a bit of a mess.
It was against this backdrop of civil war that Dunbar Hamilton changed his name to Dunbar Douglas. The Hamiltons and the Douglases were both Peers, Scottish aristocracy. They were also intertwined by marriages going back a hundred years. Hamiltons could grow up to become Dukes, whereas Douglases could only aspire to being Earls. But there were arcane rules of succession, so complex that a Scottish folk dance was created to help explain them. Anyhow, the upshot is Dunbar opted for the Earldom and became the fourth Earl of Selkirk.
The new Earl was very much a social reformer, and joined the murky Society for Constitutional Information, whose mandate was to print and circulate pamphlets that made parliament angry. Nonetheless, as much as he thought parliament needed reforms he was not what you'd call a monarchist, and in no way a Jacobite. So during the uprising he was a government supporter and was therefore on the winning side and kept his Earldom. Which he passed on to his son, Thomas Douglas, the 5th Earl of Selkirk.
Young Thomas was very much influenced by his liberal father, and took the plight of the victims of the Highland Clearances to heart. The clearances were the forced expulsion of poor crofters off the land that they worked but did not own, in clear violation of the law of dùthchas, which gave clansmen the inalienable right to rent land in clan territory. Sadly, this law was so self-evident that it was never actually written down. So the clan chiefs, who legally owned the land, would evict their tenants whenever it made economic sense to do so. And even though the Jacobite Rebellion was far in the past, the economic upheaval it caused was not. New agricultural methods (sheep) were in vogue, solely because they required fewer peasants. So the surplus were evicted. Some of these poor where given assisted passage (free tickets) to one of the colonies. Some were simply escorted to the clan border, where they would in no way be welcomed by the next clan. This upset Thomas as a bleeding heart Scot, so he set about using his connections and money to settle the displaced poor in the town of Belfast on Saint John's Island (recently renamed Prince Edward Island), as well as in Baldoon, Upper Canada.
But there were a lot of poor. Sending them to existing towns was both costly and also not practical - Prince Edward Island, for instance, had a complicated absentee landlord system which meant there was an upper limit to how much land even an Earl could acquire. So Tom put on his Lord Selkirk hat and asked the British Government to give him a large tract of land in the Red River Valley, part of Rupert's Land. The area was quite fertile and people had been farming corn, beans, squash and sunflowers, as well as fishing and hunting large game such as buffalo there for at least as long as any Europeans had been visiting, fellow Scot Alexander MacKenzie among them. So Selkirk thought it would make a good homestead for his poor crofters. But the response from the government was not positive. The Hudson's Bay Company owned that land, and had a monopoly on the fur trade in the area. A monopoly that they couldn't enforce, and the North West Company was the real player in the area, but nonetheless the British Government would not get involved. So Tom put on his Heir to the Hamilton/Douglas Fortune hat and bought enough shares in HBC to get on the board.
Now that the HBC had to seriously consider his request he only had to make them want him to have the land. And he was far from a fool. He knew that there was a veritable fur pipeline going right through the Red River Valley and being used by the rival Nor'westers. The land he wanted straddled both the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, and abutted the canoe route from Fort William, through the Lake of Woods and on to Winipic Lake. Winipic Lake was crucial because it gave access to the Saskatchewan River and the fur post of Cumberland House, which was itself the access for points west. This was right in the middle of, and in a position to control, the fur pipeline of the Nor'Westers. So he proposed to create a settlement of Scots loyal to the HBC in the Red River Valley. They would promise never to engage in the fur trade directly, but rather to supply the HBC with home grown luxuries such as beef, pork, flour and even butter as they expanded inland into the area, creating posts to enforce their monopoly. The settlement would even supply two hundred men per year as contract employees of the HBC. And, as HBC men retired, they would be welcome to some free land.
So it was a deal. HBC ceded around 300,000 square kilometers of land (4 times the size of Scotland, but still a postage stamp in British North America) to the new enterprise. They considered it the Selkirk Concession; Selkirk himself considered it Assiniboia. Then Selkirk set about getting his new colony a governor, who turned out to be one Miles MacDonell, son of Spanish John, a loyalist whom we might revisit some day. In any event, Miles, who was a bit of a crusty Scot bastard, set out with a boat load of highlanders recently evicted from the Sutherland estates, staunch Protestants and loyal British citizens all, and sailed straight into a shit storm.
It turned out that the vast tract of land they owned was also owned by the local Métis who had very close, even familial, ties with the North West Company. And they were all French Catholic. The Métis were doing a good business supplying the Nor'Westers with whatever they required as they passed through the region, and what they chiefly required was pemmican. Pemmican was a staple for extended canoe trips. It was dried and ground buffalo meat, mixed with fat and berries, and it had the ability to remain every bit as tasty months later as the day it was made. It was perhaps the single most important reason the North West Company was able to flout the HBC's monopoly on furs in the region.
So shortly after setting up his new settlement, Miles issued the Pemmican Proclamation, banning the export of any provisions from the valley, especially pemmican. This enraged both the North West people and the Métis. So they retaliated.
Within a year of the proclamation, the NWC began wooing settlers away from the harsh conditions of the colony with promises of better land in Canada. Then, together with their Métis allies, they stormed the settlement, arrested MacDonell, and burned everything to the ground. Problem solved. Until Robert Semple became the new governor and the colony was re-established.
That was November 3rd, 1815. Semple immediately did a tour of all of the HBC posts from Fort Daer far to the south to the Qu'Appelle posts to the north-west. He was likely ensuring support and resolve for his next step, which was to attack his NWC and Métis neighbours. He encouraged his colonists to settle at The Forks, the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, which was a strategic strangle hold on river traffic, and would one day be called Winnipeg. Then, only six months after his arrival in Assiniboia, Semple attacked and burned the NWC Fort Gibraltar. And this was the beginning of the Pemmican Wars.
Cuthbert Grant was one of four leaders of the local Métis at the time. His father was Cuthbert Grant Sr., the manager of a Nor'West trading post on the Saskatchewan River, and his mother was Margaret Son-gabo-ki-che-ta Grant, of the Utinwassis Cree. Grant was educated abroad, likely in Scotland, before returning to the Red River area to work for the NWC at the age of nineteen. It was shortly after his return that the Pemmican Wars were in full swing. At the height of hostilities he personally led a team of around sixty Métis and First Nations men, their purpose as muddy as the water they were traversing.
The Métis were a new thing, and no one knew quite what to make of them. On the one hand, they were not white. So it was OK to take their land and mistreat them. But on the other hand, they were not First Nations. And there was every chance that a Métis would be wealthier, better educated and from a better family (on his father's side at least) than you were. So they were a bit of a conundrum. Add to that the fact that some of them were actually lawyers and the good folk of the day found themselves in something of a propaganda war over and above any actual shooting war.
So there are several versions of what Grant was up to and what happened next. Some accounts say his team were attacking the settlement and evicting colonists. Some say he was stealing pemmican from the HBC, others say the HBC had stolen it from the Métis in the first place. Still others say Grant was attempting to kidnap Semple. Another account has it that he was simply delivering pemmican to the NWC in violation of the Pemmican Proclamation, which the Métis did not recognize (nor the Red River Colony itself for that matter). Whichever account is true, the fact is that there was a confrontation between Grant and his sixty vs. Semple and his 21 at a place Semple called Seven Oaks, and Grant called la Grenouillère, Frog Plain. And then the accounts are once again all over the map, some saying that the Métis had lied about the terms of a peace parley so Semple would be outnumbered, others saying Semple just assumed he would win any armed confrontation against savages no matter the odds. Some say Semple's side fired the first shot; others say it was the Métis. Some say the wounded were executed after the fighting was over, others say yes, that is correct; we had no need of wounded prisoners. But the outcome was pretty clear: Semple lost, and was in fact killed.
Selkirk, of course, was apoplectic over this affair. He organized a force of some 90 Swiss mercenaries and captured Fort William on Lake Superior. He arrested anyone he could find and escorted them to York to face trial for murder. But the accounts of infamy on the part of the Métis and the NWC were not totally to be trusted. Everyone Selkirk had arrested was acquitted, and Selkirk himself was counter-sued for his actions. Perhaps it was stress, maybe it was just his time, but he went into a decline around then and died a few years later. With Selkirk and his controlling shares of HBC out of the way, the HBC and the NWC merged, thus ending European hostilities. And Grant was asked by the new governor of the combined HBC to head a new Métis town of 2,000, thus ending Métis hostilities. Grant excelled at leading the new village, and a few years later was put in charge of the defence of the entire Red River colony, as well as being the sheriff and magistrate. Things were looking good for the blossoming Métis nation. Even though there was someone else's border cutting it in half.
By the time the HBC and the NWC merged in 1821, the border between the United States and British North America was slowly becoming what we know today. The Treaty of Ghent in 1814 left some loose ends that the Treaty of 1818 cleared up - essentially the border west of the Lake of the Woods was the 49th parallel all the way to the Columbia River, at which point there were further discussions required. But at any rate, the border was decided in the Red River area, and there was a good chunk of it, in particular the settlement of Pembina, which was now technically in a different country, while simultaneously being part of the contiguous Métis nation. This directly compromised the newly merged HBC's monopoly on the fur trade, because the Métis routinely went back and forth across the border they didn't really recognize, and there was a growing presence of Americans to the south, and they bought furs too. And they had whiskey, which was prohibited north of the border, but we'll talk about that some more another day. It's time to talk about Pierre Guillaume Sayer.
Pierre and three other Métis were utilizing the new border loophole to get around the HBC monopoly but they got caught and went to trial on May 17th, 1849. Ordinarily, taking First Nations folk to trial would have been a slam-dunk but the Métis were not so easy. Their counsel, James Sinclair, "Chief of the Halfbreeds", was a prominent merchant and former free trader himself. Cheering everyone on was Louis Riel père (senior), a businessman, political leader and something of an activist for the Métis cause. It was in his capacity as an activist that he brought along three hundred armed Métis and they waited outside the court to see how things went. The four free traders were found guilty; the laws may not have been fair but they were pretty clear. Wisely, though, the jury recommended mercy. Even more wisely, chief factor John Ballenden withdrew the charges and asked the court that there be no punishment. When the four emerged from court as free men there was a feu de joie (celebratory gunfire) and shouts of "le commerce est libre!" (commerce is free). This legal setback set something of a precedent and the HBC had to play nicely with the Métis after that point.
So this was the setting for Louis Riel junior's childhood. He would have been five years old when his father took on and defeated the Hudson's Bay Company and struck a blow for Métis sovereignty. By the time young Louis was thirteen, he had been identified as gifted by the local parish and so they sent him off on full scholarship to Montréal to learn how to be a priest. That didn't totally work out (there was a woman involved) but nonetheless, by the time Louis came back to the Red River Valley he was an articulate, handsome and well educated young man, looking forward to furthering the cause of the Métis nation of the Red River Valley. And then the HBC sold Rupert's Land to the brand new Dominion of Canada.
This would undoubtedly cause an influx of Anglo, and even worse, Protestant settlers into the Red River region. So the Métis National Committee was organized to protect its social, cultural and political interests. Riel was elected secretary, and then president. Under his guidance the Métis halted the Dominion survey crews and blocked the arrival of William McDougall, the new lieutenant-governor for the territory that was formerly known as Rupert's Land and was currently known as the North West Territory.
They seized Upper Fort Garry (in modern day Winnipeg) from a carefully neutral HBC and then declared themselves the government of the Red River settlement. Next they invited all settlers, both English and French, to a summit to be held at Fort Garry to discuss the terms for admitting McDougall, and so therefore Canada, into the northwest.
This resulted in the Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land and the North-West, which said, in part:
"Be it known, therefore, to the world in general and to the Canadian Government in particular, that as we have always heretofore successfully defended our country in frequent wars with the neighbouring tribes of Indians, who are now on friendly relations with us, we are firmly resolved in future not less than in the past, to repel all invasions from whatsoever quarter they may come."
While still leaving the door open to Confederation:
"That meanwhile we hold ourselves in readiness to enter into such negotiations with the Canadian Government, as may be favorable for the good government and prosperity of this people."
Canada's response was to send a priest, an officer, and the Canadian head of the HBC to see what they could work out. What they worked out was another summit, to be composed equally of English and French settlers. Now it must be said that the English would be Scots of Clan Sutherland, who would be Protestant British supporters. And the French would be Métis, and, well, French, who would be Catholic and not so much supporters of Britain. Anyway, in this second summit it was decided to create the Provisional Government of Assiniboia, and its three branches: an elected legislature, an executive that reported to the legislature, and a judicial branch. This new government sent three delegates off to Ottawa to negotiate the entry of the Red River Valley into Confederation.
So this was all happening in early 1870. But now we have to rewind a bit to 1795 and move from the Red River to Ulster in County Armagh, in the northern part of Ireland. Tensions were running high between the Catholic Irish and the Protestant British, still the fallout from the Battle of the Boyne a hundred years prior, when William, the Protestant Prince of Orange, defeated James, the Catholic King. The Protestants had the Peep O'Day Boys while the Catholics had the Defenders, both essentially gangs of terrorists dedicated to the violent harassment of the other. In very broad strokes, the Orangemen, a Protestant, anti-Catholic and pro-British movement, grew out of the former, while the Fenian Brotherhood, a largely Catholic but in any event violently anti-British and pro-Irish Republic, grew out of the latter.
We'll talk more of the Brotherhood another day, but for today's story, fast forward to 1870 and Portage la Prairie to the far west in the Red River Colony where an armed force of Orangemen were amassing. Their goal was to gain the support of the Protestant Scots of the Red River Valley and overthrow the new Catholic provisional government.
The Grand Orange Lodge of British America had been in existence for almost sixty years at this point, ever since the War of 1812. Their primary goal was helping Protestant immigrants, and they would, for instance, take care of Protestant widows in the days before any kind of government social assistance. But they quickly became a political entity. Toronto, where they had their start, had almost 30 Orange lodges in 1870 and would earn the nickname "The Belfast of Canada" by the turn of the century.
The order's political ideal was Ascendency, which to them meant control of the militia, the government, magistrates and juries; in effect, placing them to some degree above (and behind) the law. In Toronto, most of the aldermen were Orange and twenty of twenty-three mayors in the nineteenth century knew the secret handshake. This degree of influence gave them a great deal of immunity and lead to "legitimate" violence to further the cause. There were 29 riots in Toronto over political issues instigated by the Orange, and one such in 1841 caused a visiting Charles Dickens to comment: "It is a matter of deep regret that political differences should have run high in this place, and led to most discreditable and disgraceful results. It is not long since guns were discharged from a window in this town at the successful candidates in an election, and the coachman of one of them was actually shot in the body, though not dangerously wounded. But one man was killed on the same occasion; and from the very window whence he received his death, the very flag which shielded his murderer (not only in the commission of his crime, but from its consequences), was displayed again on the occasion of the public ceremony performed by the Governor General, to which I have just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there is but one which could be so employed: I need not say that flag was orange."
In addition to Aldermen and Mayors, the Order claimed the membership of four Prime Ministers including Sir John A. Macdonald, who happened to be the first PM after Confederation, and, more to the point, the one in power when Louis Riel led the Red River Rebellion. As far as Sir John and all the rest of the Orange Order were concerned, Louis was the complete antithesis of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant - a Métis French Catholic. So a little legitimate violence was in order, and that is why an armed Orange force was amassing in Portage la Prairie.
But the insurrection didn't work out; the lot of them were arrested, and Thomas Scott, a bit of a stand-out in a field of agitators, was executed on Riel's orders. Both the Provisional Government of Assiniboia and the Canadian Government opted to turn a blind eye to this affair, as negotiations were underway to admit the new Province of Manitoba, and no one wanted to screw that deal up. The Assiniboians were after 1.4 million acres of land for the Métis, and official bilingualism to recognize their French Heritage. The Canadians were simply after a new province. The deal was struck, the Manitoba Act received royal assent on 12 May 1870, Canada was bigger by one province, and everyone went away happy.
Except the Orange Lodge of Ontario, an organization of immense influence going right to the top and of which Scott had been a member. A reward of $5,000 was offered for Riel's arrest. Partly in an effort to assuage Ontario's concerns, partly to show the new Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba (A. G. Archibald) federal support, but mostly to lynch Louis Riel, Colonel Garnet Wolsey, Irish-British and therefore Orange, headed out to Manitoba in the summer of 1870 on "an errand of peace". Louis wisely decided to disappear for a time, and fled to the States before returning to Saint-Vital in the Red River where he remained incognito for a year or two. But this is the point at which we'll have to leave Louis Riel hanging for a bit. We'll return to him another day.
So that is the story of how two sons of activist fathers brought about the creation of Manitoba and its inclusion in Confederation. The one foresaw a Scottish community, the other more of a Métis thing. As of the 2016 census there were almost 90,000 people living in Manitoba who identified themselves as being of Métis descent. But almost 210,000 Scots. So in terms of raw numbers, Selkirk won. But in terms of music, well that's different. The Scots have the skirl (a shrill, wailing sound) of the bagpipes and they dance around swords for some reason. The Métis, on the other hand, have the Métis fiddle, and the related Jig, a combination of step-dancing, reels, jigs proper, and quadrille steps that showcase their First Nations, Scottish and French Canadian roots. At almost any Métis function, someone will resin up the bow and play the Red River Jig; perhaps they will then follow up with the Louis Riel Reel.