Red River Colony

The Red River Colony — also known as the Selkirk Settlement, or as Assiniboia — was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on 300,000 square kilometres of land in British North America. The land was granted to Douglas by the Hudson's Bay Company in the Selkirk Concession, and included portions of Rupert's Land — the watershed of Hudson Bay — bounded by the Assiniboine River, Lake Winnipegosis, Lake Winnipeg and the Winnipeg, Rainy and Lake of the Woods rivers: territory covering present-day southern Manitoba, northern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota and small parts of the neighbouring provinces and states. The lands south of the 49th parallel ceased to be part of the colony with the signing of the treaty that fixed the border. At the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers stood Fort Garry, the Hudson's Bay Company's fortified post at the heart of the settlement, where the Scots and Swiss settlers of Selkirk's project lived alongside the Métis buffalo-hunters of the plains. In 1869–70, under Louis Riel's leadership, the Métis rebels were able to capture Fort Garry, which led Riel to become the leader of a provisional government that composed and sent a list of rights to Ottawa — demanding, among other things, that the Métis be treated as the 'descendants of the lords of the soil'. The colony's separate existence ended in July 1870, when its territory passed into the new Canadian dominion.