The North-West Rebellion: The History and Legacy of the Native American Uprising against Canada in the Late 19th Century

The Métis people, later one of the three recognized aboriginal groups in Canada, were an indigenous group that came from marriages between French traders and native women, but Scotch and English cultures were also heavy influencers among the Métis. The term comes from a Latin word for “to mix” and originally referred to the children of these relationships, but the Métis would grow to become a major intermediary between the white settlers moving across North America and native fur traders, and during the 19th century, the Métis “considered themselves a separate nation, different from other people, including the Indians and the French.”

Like other native groups, as settlers began further encroaching on territory they inhabited, tensions boiled. In June 1816, a group of Métis attacked Red River colonists and their acting governor at a point known as Seven Oaks. Cuthbert Grant, a Métis fighter, had carried out several attacks against the Red River Colony and Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts, and this pattern would continue until the whites were driven out of Red River altogether.

Of course, that local victory wouldn’t stop the inexorable march of settlement altogether, and over the decades, there would be more fighting, with the most notorious outbreak coming in the 1880s. That resistance movement is widely known today as the North-West Rebellion, and all the factors that had gone into forming Canada as it is recognizable today would be at play.