Red River Resistance Résistance de la rivière Rouge (French) |
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The Métis provisional government |
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Belligerents | |||||||
Métis Provisional government |
Canada Canadian Party |
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Louis Riel John Bruce Ambroise-Dydime Lépine |
John A. Macdonald William McDougall John Christian Schultz Garnet Wolseley |
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Casualties and losses | |||||||
None | 1 (Thomas Scott) |
Métis political victory
Canadian military victory
The Red River Resistance (or the Red River Rebellion, Red River uprising, or First Riel Rebellion) was the sequence of events that lead 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 of 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 Ontario. 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.