North–West Rebellion (1885)

• Main Author: England, Shawn
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2011
• Subjects: Hudson; Hudson Bay
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444338232.wbeow456; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781444338232.wbeow456

Abstract This armed uprising, the largest rebellion in Canadian history, had its roots deep in the history of Canada's fur trade and the creation of Rupert's Land. This was an enormous territory created in 1670 by fiat of England's King Charles II, who also granted the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) a lucrative fur trade monopoly within the vast Hudson Bay watershed. A mixed‐race and predominantly French Catholic people known as the Métis evolved there over the next two centuries, as company employees and other Europeans formed sexual unions with indigenous women. In 1811 Thomas Douglas, the 5th Earl of Selkirk, established the Red River Colony in the heart of Rupert's Land for Scottish immigrants, but it grew slowly during the nineteenth century by attracting numerous mostly Métis settlers.