![]() The Blackfoot almost immediately tested the intentions of the police by reporting the activities of some of the remaining whisky traders. A scarlet tunic and blue trousers were therefore adopted.Īfter a gruelling march of more than two months the force arrived to find that most of the traders had fled. Several reports on the state of affairs in the North-West Territories had stressed the symbolic significance of the traditional British army uniform for the Indigenous people. The new police force, which gradually acquired the name North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), was organized along the lines of a cavalry regiment and armed with pistols, carbines (small, short-barreled rifles) and a few small artillery pieces. The following spring another 150 joined them. In May that year, Parliament passed an Act establishing a force, and 150 recruits were sent west that August to spend the winter at Fort Garry (what is now Winnipeg). Nothing further happened until 1873, when Ottawa, as part of plans to administer the North-West Territories, revived the idea of a federal police force. Under the British North America Act, law enforcement was a provincial not a federal responsibility. The plans had to be shelved when the Red River Rebellion of 1869-70 led to the creation of the province of Manitoba in the southern corner of the Territories. However, no such force was ultimately created. Half the men of the force were to be local Métis. ![]() In 1869 William McDougall, sent out as first Canadian lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories, carried instructions to organize a police force under Captain D.R. They would maintain order through the difficult early years of settlement, then, having served their purpose, they would disappear. The police for the North-West Territories were to be a temporary organization. Macdonald therefore adopted the Royal Irish Constabulary as the model for Canada. The British government had some experience with centralized police forces in India and Ireland, however, and the forces there were unquestionably effective. In these areas the burden of maintaining public order fell upon the courts, backed up in emergencies by the military. The larger cities had primitive local constabularies small towns and the countryside had no police at all. The government also feared that violence and lawlessness in the new territories might provide American expansionists with an excuse to move in.Ĭanada in the 1870s, like most jurisdictions whose legal systems were based on English common law, had few police forces. Apart from the cost in lives on both sides, the Canadian government could not contemplate the expense of a major "Indian war," which might easily bankrupt the country. At worst, the tensions generated by this process might erupt into the kind of settler-Indigenous warfare experienced in the American West. Thousands of settlers would arrive to occupy the lands where Cree and Blackfoot hunted buffalo without restraint. The Canadian takeover of Rupert's Land, soon to be called the North-West Territories, meant the imposition of a government that would systematically interfere with Indigenous customs for the first time. The company made no effort to govern the Indigenous population. There were few traders, and their livelihood depended on economic co-operation with the Indigenous people. The Hudson's Bay Company had ruled this frontier (what is today northern Quebec and Ontario, all of Manitoba, and parts of Saskatchewan, Alberta and the northern territories) for almost two centuries without serious friction between fur traders and the Indigenous population. After Confederation, when the newly formed nation was negotiating the purchase of Rupert's Land, the federal government faced the problem of how to administer this vast territory peacefully. Policing the FrontierĬanada’s national police service had small, temporary beginnings. Despite a series of scandals in recent decades, the RCMP remains one of Canada's most iconic national institutions. The "Mounties" have a long and proud history dating back to Confederation and the opening of the Canadian West. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is Canada’s national police force – providing an array of services from municipal policing to national security intelligence gathering. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride.
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