Looting of Battleford
| Looting of Battleford | |||||
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| Part of the North-West Rebellion | |||||
 Fort Battleford National Historic Site |
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The Looting of Battleford began at the end of March, 1885, during the North-West Rebellion, in the town of Battleford, Saskatchewan, then a part of the Northwest Territories.
Within days of the Métis victory at the Battle of Duck Lake on March 26, 1885 Cree bands sympathetic to the Métis cause and with grievances of their own began raiding stores and farms in the western part of the District of Saskatchewan for arms, ammunition and food supplies while civilians fled to the larger settlements and forts of the North-West Territories.
Prominent leaders of this uprising were Chief Poundmaker and Chief Big Bear. Poundmaker and his band had a reserve near present-day Cut Knife about 50 km (31 miles) west of Fort Battleford. Big Bear and his band had settled near Frog Lake about 55 km (34 miles) northwest of Fort Pitt but had not yet selected a reserve site. Both bands were signatories of Treaty 6 and were unhappy in the way it was implemented by the Canadian government. The loss of the buffalo and the inadequate rations provided by the Indian agents kept the bands in a continual state of near-starvation.
The District of Saskatchewan in 1885 was divided into three sub-districts and had a population of 10,595. To the east the Carrot River sub-district with 1,770 people remained quiet. The Prince Albert sub-district located in the centre of the district had a population of 5,373 which included the Southbranch settlements with about 1,300. The Southbranch settlements was the centre of Louis Riel's Provisional Government during the Rebellion. To the west where the Cree uprising led by Poundmaker and Big Bear occurred was the Battleford sub-district with 3,603 people.
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