A FUTILE VICTORY FOR THE FIRST NATIONS

With regard to historical parallels in the two westward-expanding North American countries, the 1885 North-West Rebellion was the closest Canada experienced to both civil war and any of the Indian wars fought by its neighbor to the south, the United States. On March 19, 1885, half-blood Métis leader Louis David Riel declared the independent Provisional Government of Saskatchewan. A week later a force of Prince Albert Volunteers and North-West Mounted Police under NWMP Superintendent Leif Crozier, tasked with reestablishing Canadian rule, suffered an embarrassing rout at Duck Lake, just northwest of the Métis’ self-proclaimed capital of Batoche. While Canadian Prime Minister John A. McDonald’s government and the Métis, under the able military leadership of renowned plainsman Gabriel Dumont, mobilized for war, everyday Canadians—from settlers in Saskatchewan to officials in Ottawa—cast a nervous glance at the territory’s indigenous people, most of whom were living on reserves designated for them in government treaties. Would the Indians, known as the First Nations in Canada, rise up alongside their part-European cousins the Métis?

The Indians certainly would have had cause. A recent steep decline in the bison population, combined with economic troubles back east and consequent lapses in the government’s distribution of supplemental rations under its own treaty obligations, had brought widespread hunger that drove many tribes to seek renegotiation. Although most Indians, influenced notably by the Blackfoot spokesman Chief Crowfoot, stopped short of resorting to violence, a handful of disaffected Cree and Assiniboine warriors did participate in the fighting. Still, while the Métis certainly sent emissaries among them, there is scant retrospective evidence of any Indians outside the Batoche