Southbranch Settlement

Southbranch Settlement (French: Communautés métisses de la rivière Saskatchewan Sud) was the name ascribed to a series of French Métis settlements on the Canadian prairies in the 19th century, in what is today the province of Saskatchewan.

Métis settlers began making homes here in the 1860s and 1870s, many of them fleeing economic and social dislocation from Red River, Manitoba.

[1] Batoche and St. Laurent de Grandin were founded by French Métis hivernants from the Red River settlement.

[3] In 1873 the Southbranch settlements organized a form of local government, under Gabriel Dumont, based on the laws of the buffalo hunt.

[5] The North-West Resistance of 1885 was a traumatic event for all the Southbranch communities, and they had passed their prime by the 1890s when the railway brought in increasing numbers of new immigrant settlers.