The southern border west of Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains was the drainage divide between the Mississippi and Red/Saskatchewan watersheds until the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 substituted the 49th parallel.

Under the principles of the doctrine of discovery, after the English visited and "discovered" Hudson's Bay, they could claim any lands found that were not already owned or "possessed" by other European or Christian nations.

[6] Rupert's Land had been essentially a private continental estate covering 3.9 million km2 in the heart of North America that stretched from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and from the prairies to the Arctic Circle.

[8] In 1927, the Supreme Court of Canada held that the terms of the Charter had granted ownership of all the land in the Hudson Bay drainage to the company, including all precious minerals.

Lastly, the Government of Canada compensated the Hudson's Bay Company £300,000 (£35,977,894 pound sterling in 2019 money, or $60,595,408 Canadian dollars) for the surrender of its charter on the terms set out in the order-in-council.

There was strong business and political agitation in Upper Canada for annexing the territory; in London the company's trading license was due for review; in St. Paul there was a growing interest in the area as a field for U.S. expansion.

[19] There were only three cases before the 19th century with the one with the most detailed notes being the trial of one Thomas Butler in 1715 at the York Factory who was convicted of theft, slander and fornication with a native woman.

[19] In the early 19th century, the HBC had waged a violent struggle with the rival North West Company based in Montreal for the control of the fur trade culminating in the Battle of Seven Oaks of 1816, which led to an investigation by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and which in turn led to the Second Canada Jurisdiction Act 1821, ordering the Hudson's Bay Company to establish justice of the peace courts in Rupert's Land.

[18] In 1839, the Hudson's Bay Company were convinced of the need to dispense formal justice throughout Rupert's Land and established a court at the Red River Colony, in the "District of Assiniboia", south of Lake Winnipeg.

A recorder and president of the court would act as legal organizer, adviser, magistrate, and councillor and be responsible for the rationalization and formalization of Rupert's Land's judicial system.

Baker shows that the legal history of the Red River Colony – and, by extension, of the Canadian West in general – is based on English common law.

[citation needed] The Hudson's Bay Company maintained peace in Rupert's Land for the benefit of the fur trade; the Plains Indians had achieved a rough balance of power among themselves; the organization of the Métis provided internal security and a degree of external protection.

This stable order broke down in the 1860s with the decline of the Hudson's Bay Company,[citation needed] smallpox epidemics and the arrival of American whisky traders on the Great Plains, and the disappearance of the bison.

Early in the century, fur trade competition forced the company to expand into this interior region, and some officials saw advantages in allowing missionaries to accompany them.

John West, the first Protestant missionary to come to the area in 1820, David Anderson the first Bishop of Rupert's Land,[24] William Bompas and the Native American Anglican priests: Henry Budd,[24] James Settee, and Robert McDonald.