The Métis and Cree of the Saskatchewan district of the Northwest Territories took up arms against Canada in 1885. The Métis, angered by the government’s delays in giving them land grants and by its refusal to recognize them as a distict people, and the Cree, whose means of livelihood, the buffalo, had been driven off by settlement, asked Louis Riel for help. Riel arrived in Batoche in July 1884 from exile in the US.
After unsuccessfully petitioning the government in Ottawa, Riel resorted to armed revolt in March 1885 after a skirmish at Duck Lake. The Canadian government sent troops on the Canadian Pacific Railway, then under construction. Under General Frederick Middleton, they scored a decisive victory over Gabriel Dumont and the rebellious forces at Batoche. Riel fled, but surrendered himself the next day.
