Outside accepted riverlot groupings, the survey imposed a standard grid on the land, allocating particular numbered sections in each township to the HBC and the CPR.

[28] In 1884, the Métis in the Southbranch settlements (including many Anglo-Métis) sent a delegation to ask Louis Riel to return from the United States, where he had fled after the Red River Rebellion, to appeal to the government on their behalf.

In both the Frog Lake Massacre and the Looting of Battleford, small dissident groups of Cree men revolted against white authorities, ignoring the leadership of Big Bear and Poundmaker.

Riel had been invited in to lead the movement but he turned it into a military action with a heavily religious tone, thereby alienating the Catholic clergy, the whites, nearly all of the First Nations, and most of the Métis.

He had a force of a couple hundred Métis and a smaller number of First Nations at Batoche in May 1885, confronting isolated groups of armed settlers, HBC trading posts and NWMP detachments, and two small militia units at Winnipeg.

Reports of the provisional government were discredited at Ottawa and at first thought to be a device of the Liberal party,[41] but on March 23 Prime Minister Macdonald publicly confirmed the news of the rebellion.

Eventually, over a period of many weeks, Middleton brought 3,000 troops to the West, and incorporated another 2,000, mostly English-Canadian volunteers, and 500 North-West Mounted Police into his force.

Wandering Spirit's men were angered by what seemed to be unfair treaties and the withholding of vital provisions by the Canadian government, and also by the dwindling buffalo population, their main source of food.

Gathering the white settlers in the area into or near the local church, they killed Thomas Quinn, the town's Indian agent, after a disagreement broke out.

The Canadian militia was commanded by Major General Frederick Middleton, who had had previous experience imposing imperial rule over Maori and Indian Mutineers.

The Alberta Field Force led by Thomas Bland Strange, assembled at Calgary, moved north on the Calgary and Edmonton Trail to secure Edmonton from attack, then went down the North Saskatchewan River to secure Victoria Settlement, recapture Fort Pitt, then moved overland in pursuit of Big Bear's band.

The column, led by Lieutenant Colonel William Otter, attacked a sleeping Cree encampment on Cut Knife Hill 45 km northwest of Battleford on May 2.

At Loon Lake, about 60 km northeast of Frenchman's Butte, on June 3, the scouts and Big Bear's band fought in the last armed engagement of the 1885 rebellion.

Although it lost the Conservative Party most of its support in Quebec, it guaranteed Anglophone control of the Prairies and demonstrated the national government was capable of decisive action.

[66] These men, found guilty of killing outside of the military conflict, were Wandering Spirit, (Kapapamahchakwew) a Plains Cree war chief, Little Bear (Apaschiskoos), Walking the Sky (AKA Round the Sky), Bad Arrow, Miserable Man, Iron Body, Ika (AKA Crooked Leg) and Man Without Blood, for murders committed at Frog Lake and at Battleford (the murders of Farm Instructor Payne and Battleford farmer Barney Tremont).

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) played a key role in the government's response to the conflict, as it was able to transport federal troops to the area quickly.

While it had taken three months to get troops to the Red River Rebellion, the government was able to move forces in nine days by train in response to events in the North-West Territories.

[citation needed] Riel's trial and Macdonald's refusal to commute his sentence caused lasting upset in Quebec, and led to a fundamental francophone distrust of Anglophone politicians.

[73] In the spring of 2008, Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Christine Tell proclaimed in Duck Lake, that "the 125th commemoration, in 2010, of the 1885 Northwest Rebellion is an excellent opportunity to tell the story of the prairie Métis and First Nations peoples' struggle with Government forces and how it has shaped Canada today.

[78][79][80] The Métis brought his body to Saint-Vital, his mother's home, now the Riel House National Historic Site, and then interred it at the Saint-Boniface Basilica in Manitoba, his birthplace, for burial.

[81][82] Highway 11, stretching from Regina to just south of Prince Albert, has been named Louis Riel Trail by the province; the roadway passes near locations of the conflict.

Big Bear (Mistahimaskwa) used the site in his initial negotiations for Treaty Six in about 1884, and finally, the following year he surrendered here after his engagement at Steele Narrows (Battle of Loon Lake).

[101] Frenchman Butte, a national historic site of Canada, is the location of the 1885 battle between Cree and Canadian troops of Strange's Alberta Field Force.

On 2nd May 1885, Lt. Col. W. D. Otter led 325 troops composed of North-West Mounted Police, "B" Battery, "C" Company, Foot Guards, Queen's Own and Battleford Rifles, against Cree and Assiniboine under Poundmaker and Fine Day.

[109][110] Fort Ethier, a two-story log blockhouse built by Strange's Alberta Field Force in its march north to Edmonton, still stands near Wetaskiwin.

B. Osgoode and John Rogers, who fell in action at Cutknife Hill, also stands at the Cartier Square Drill Hall, in Ottawa, Ontario.

Arthur Silver Morton, who was the University of Saskatchewan's first librarian, compiled many of the original manuscripts, transcripts, and photographs related to the 1885 conflict that were made available in 1995 as part of project funded by Industry Canada in 1995.

Since the 1970s Tom Flanagan published numerous scholarly studies "debunking the heroism of Métis icon Louis Riel, arguing against native land claims, and calling for an end to aboriginal rights.

"[113] In his 1987 publication Footprints in the Dust, Douglas Light focused on the local history of the region incorporating Métis and First Nation perspectives on events including accounts of everyday life.

[32][116] Miller says that early relations between Indigenous people and Euro-Canadian were characterized by a mutuality and collaboration, with each remaining autonomous, especially in trading relationships and as military allies.