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Manitoba: A brief history

The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.

The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.

The geographical area now named Manitoba was originally inhabited by Ojibwa, Cree, Dene, Sioux, and Assiniboine peoples, along with other tribes entering the area to trade. The Whiteshell region, with many petroforms, may have been a trading center, or even a place of learning and sharing of knowledge. The first European to reach present-day Manitoba was Sir Thomas Button, who visited the Nelson River in 1612 and may have reached somewhere along the edge of the prairies. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vrendrye, visited the Red River Valley in the 1730s as part of opening the area for French exploration and exploitation. An important French-Canadian population (Franco-Manitobains) still lives in Manitoba, especially in the Saint-Boniface district of Winnipeg. The territory was won by Britain in 1763 as part of the French and Indian War, and became part of Rupert's Land, the immense monopoly territory of the Hudson's Bay Company. The founding of the first agricultural community in 1811 by Lord Selkirk, near modern Winnipeg, resulted in conflict between the white colonists and the Mtis who lived near there. Twenty colonists, including the governor, were killed by the Mtis in the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816. When Rupert's Land was ceded to Canada in 1869 and incorporated into the Northwest Territories, a lack of attention to Mtis concerns led their leader Louis Riel to establish a provisional government, The Red River Rebellion. Negotiations between this government and the Canadian government resulted in the creation of the province of Manitoba and its entry into Confederation in 1870. Originally the province was only 1/18 of its current size and square in shape Ð it was known as the "postage stamp province." It grew progressively, absorbing land from the Northwest Territories until it attained its current size. Ð Source: Wikipedia

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