"The Red River Rebellion or Red River Resistance was the sequence of events related to the 1869 establishment of a provisional government by the Métis leader Louis Riel and his followers at the Red River Settlement, in what is now the Canadian province of Manitoba.
The Rebellion was the first crisis the new government faced following Canadian Confederation in 1867. The Canadian government had bought Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869 and appointed an English-speaking governor, William McDougall. He was opposed by the French-speaking, mostly Métis inhabitants of the settlement. Before the land was officially transferred to Canada, McDougall sent out surveyors to plot the land according to the square township system used in Ontario. The Métis, led by Riel, prevented McDougall from entering the territory. McDougall declared that the Hudson's Bay Company was no longer in control of the territory and that Canada had asked for the transfer of sovereignty to be postponed. The Métis created a provisional government, to which they invited an equal number of Anglophone representatives. Riel undertook to negotiate directly with the Canadian government to establish Assiniboia as a province.
Meanwhile, Riel's men arrested members of a pro-Canadian faction who had resisted the provisional government. They included an Orangeman named Thomas Scott. Riel's government tried and convicted Scott, and executed him for threatening to murder Louis Riel. This was considered an act of treason. Canada and the Assiniboia provisional government soon negotiated an agreement. In 1870, the legislature passed the Manitoba Act, allowing the Red River settlement to enter Confederation as the province of Manitoba. The Act also incorporated some of Riel's demands, such as provision of separate French schools for Métis children and protection of the practice of Catholicism.
After reaching agreement, Canada sent a military expedition to Manitoba to enforce federal authority. Now known as the Wolseley Expedition (or Red River Expedition), it consisted of Canadian militia and British regular soldiers led by Colonel Garnet Wolseley. As the expedition headed west, outrage grew in Ontario over Scott's execution. Many easterners demanded that Wolseley's expedition be used to arrest Riel and suppress what they considered to be rebellion. Riel fled to the USA, before the expedition reached Fort Garry in Manitoba, and the arrival of troops marked the end of the Rebellion."
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"Louis Riel was viewed by some as a saviour, and by some as a traitor, Riel nevertheless became the voice of the Métis people during a turbulent time in Canadian history, and was largely responsible for the entrance of the province of Manitoba into Confederation.
The Red River Settlement land-surveying episode set in motion the irrevocable rise in tensions between the Métis and the federal authorities. The need for the Métis to organize themselves became obvious and Riel assumed the leadership of the movement.
The political organization of the Métis continued as a convention of representatives from the Métis and Anglophone population was set up. Four "Lists of Rights" were drafted. These constituted the basis of the negotiations leading to the entry of Manitoba into Canadian confederation.
On March 22, 1870, a fourth and final version of the List of Rights was drafted and sent to Ottawa by the trio of Ritchot, Black and Alfred H. Scott, all chosen by the committee to represent the provisional government. At that time, Riel played a more secondary role in the events that were taking place in Ottawa. He was devoted above all to the affairs of the Red River Settlement.
Following many years of stress, Riel suffered mental exhaustion, which in 1876, forced him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Montréal, then in Beauport, close to Québec.
From 1877 to 1884, he stayed in the United States, between Keeseville, N.Y. (close to Montréal) and Montana, and obtained American citizenship in 1883.
On returning to Saskatchewan in 1884, he found that the Métis and the First Nations in southern Saskatchewan had a number of grievances. After many attempts to vindicate what the federal government, according to him, owed the First Nations and Métis, Riel, convinced that many hundreds of men in the North West Mounted Police were advancing towards them, formed a provisional government in Batoche, Saskatchewan.
Those actions angered English Canada, which, not willing to understand the validity of the Métis' and First Nations' claims, called on the Macdonald government to act. It sent the Canadian militia to Batoche, Calgary and Battleford, Saskatchewan. The Indian and Métis resistance could not survive against the strength of the Canadian militia. On May 12, 1885, the rebellion ended. Riel gave himself up to the North West Mounted Police. Accused of treason, he was tried in Regina where he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Louis Riel was hanged on November 16, 1885, in the North West Mounted Police quarters in Regina."
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