Red River Resistance (1869-1870): Louis Riel and the Metis

The Red River Resistance was the uprising of 1869-1870 in which the Metis of the Red River Settlement, led by the young Louis Riel, refused to accept the transfer of their homeland to Canada on terms set without them. Centred on Upper Fort Garry, in what is now Winnipeg, it produced a provisional government, the controversial execution of Thomas Scott and, through negotiation, the Manitoba Act of 1870. It decided how the vast North-West joined the new Dominion and made Riel one of the most debated figures in Canadian history.

Background: Rupert’s Land changes hands

For two centuries the Hudson’s Bay Company had held a royal charter over Rupert’s Land, the enormous drainage basin of Hudson Bay. After Canadian Confederation in 1867, the new Dominion was eager to expand west, and in 1869 the company agreed to surrender its rights to Canada in return for £300,000 and land around its trading posts. The transfer was set for 1 December 1869.

Nobody asked the people who actually lived at Red River. The settlement, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, had roughly 12,000 inhabitants, most of them of mixed Indigenous and European descent. French-speaking, Catholic Metis made up the largest group, alongside English-speaking “country-born” families, Scottish settlers and a small but vocal group of newcomers from Ontario.

Many Metis held their river lots by custom rather than formal title. When Canadian surveyors arrived in the summer of 1869 and began laying out square townships that ignored the long, narrow river-lot pattern, fear spread that land would be handed to incoming Ontarians.

The resistance begins

On 11 October 1869 a group of unarmed Metis, Riel among them, stood on a surveyor’s chain on the hay lands of André Nault and told the crew to stop. Riel, then 24 years old and educated in Montreal, quickly emerged as the movement’s spokesman. A Metis National Committee was formed later that month.

Ottawa had already named William McDougall as lieutenant governor of the territory. The committee warned him not to enter, and armed Metis built a barrier across the road at St Norbert. On 2 November McDougall was turned back towards Pembina, just across the American border. The same day Riel’s men occupied Upper Fort Garry without bloodshed, giving them the settlement’s main stores and stronghold.

McDougall’s position soon collapsed. Ottawa, alarmed by the trouble, postponed the transfer, but McDougall did not know this and on 1 December issued a proclamation claiming authority he did not possess. A small armed party of Canadian sympathisers gathered at the store of John Christian Schultz; they surrendered to the Metis on 7 December and were imprisoned at the fort.

A provisional government

On 8 December 1869 Riel issued a declaration announcing a provisional government, arguing that the Hudson’s Bay Company’s withdrawal had left the people without lawful authority. He became its president later that month.

Prime Minister John A. Macdonald sent Donald Smith, a senior Hudson’s Bay Company official, as a special commissioner. In January 1870 Smith addressed open-air mass meetings of more than a thousand people in bitter cold, which led to a Convention of Forty, with equal English-speaking and French-speaking delegates. The convention drew up a list of rights and confirmed a broader provisional government, with Riel again as president, in February 1870. Three delegates, Father Noël-Joseph Ritchot, Judge John Black and Alfred Scott, were chosen to negotiate with Ottawa.

The execution of Thomas Scott

In mid-February an armed party from Portage la Prairie, joined by men who had escaped from the fort, moved against the provisional government. They were captured on 17 February 1870. Their leader, Charles Boulton, was sentenced to death but spared after appeals.

Among the prisoners was Thomas Scott, an Irish-born Orangeman from Ontario who had already been held once and who repeatedly abused his guards. A Metis court-martial convicted him of insubordination, and on 4 March 1870 he was shot by a firing squad outside the walls of Upper Fort Garry.

The execution was the gravest mistake of the resistance. In Protestant Ontario, Scott became a martyr and Riel a murderer; in Catholic Quebec many saw Riel as the defender of French-speaking Catholics. The quarrel would divide Canada along lines of language and religion for decades.

The Manitoba Act

Despite the uproar, the Red River delegates reached Ottawa and negotiated with Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. The Manitoba Act received royal assent on 12 May 1870 and took effect on 15 July 1870, when Rupert’s Land formally passed to Canada.

The new province was tiny, a “postage stamp” around the settlement, but it met several key demands. French and English were both official languages in the legislature and courts, Catholic and Protestant schools were protected, and 1.4 million acres were set aside for the children of the Metis. Unlike other provinces, however, Manitoba did not control its own public lands, which stayed with Ottawa.

The question of an amnesty was left vague. Riel believed one had been promised; Ottawa never formally granted it before the troops arrived.

The Wolseley expedition and Riel’s flight

To assert federal authority, Canada and Britain sent the Red River Expedition under Colonel Garnet Wolseley, about 1,200 British regulars and Canadian militia. They travelled for months by boat and portage from Lake Superior and reached Upper Fort Garry on 24 August 1870. Riel, fearing for his life, had fled shortly before.

What followed was hard on the Metis. Some militia volunteers sought revenge for Scott, and several Metis were assaulted; at least one man, Elzéar Goulet, drowned while being chased by a mob. Distribution of the promised land grant was slow and often went astray through speculation, and many Metis families moved further west to the Saskatchewan valley over the following years.

Key people

• Louis Riel (1844-1885): Metis leader and president of the provisional government; later leader of the North-West Resistance of 1885.
• Ambroise Lépine: Riel’s adjutant-general, who presided over the court-martial of Thomas Scott and was later tried and sentenced to death, a sentence commuted.
• Donald Smith: Hudson’s Bay Company official and federal commissioner who helped open negotiations; later a key financier of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
• John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier: the federal leaders who negotiated the Manitoba Act.
• Thomas Scott: the prisoner whose execution became a lasting political wound.

Timeline

• 1869, 11 October: Metis halt a survey crew on André Nault’s land.
• 1869, 2 November: William McDougall is turned back; Riel’s men occupy Upper Fort Garry.
• 1869, 7 December: Canadian party at Schultz’s store surrenders.
• 1869, 8 December: Riel declares a provisional government.
• 1870, January: Mass meetings with Donald Smith; Convention of Forty begins.
• 1870, 4 March: Thomas Scott is executed at Upper Fort Garry.
• 1870, 12 May: The Manitoba Act receives royal assent.
• 1870, 15 July: Manitoba becomes a province of Canada.
• 1870, 24 August: Wolseley’s expedition reaches Fort Garry; Riel has fled.

Legacy

Riel was elected to the House of Commons for Provencher but was expelled and never sat; in 1875 he was granted an amnesty conditional on five years’ banishment. He returned to lead the North-West Resistance in 1885 and was hanged for treason at Regina on 16 November 1885. Like the earlier rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, the events at Red River became a touchstone in arguments about who Canada was for.

Historians now often prefer the term “resistance”, stressing that the Metis negotiated entry into Canada rather than seeking to leave it. Manitoba marks Louis Riel Day each February, and in 2013 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the federal Crown had failed to implement the Metis land provision of the Manitoba Act with the diligence it required.

Why it matters

The Red River Resistance determined that the West would enter Confederation as a province with guaranteed language and school rights, not simply as a colony of Ontario. It also exposed deep divisions between English and French Canada and set the pattern of unresolved Metis land claims that still shapes Canadian law and politics.