6/11/2023 0 Comments Battle snake ridge![]() After the capture of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s pemmican on the Qu’Appelle, Grant led his men in two bands under two “captains” to the capture of Brandon House and the collision with Governor Robert Semple and his men at Seven Oaks. ![]() When Colin Robertson restored the colony that fall, the reply of the Nor’Westers was to proclaim Cuthbert Grant, the educated halfbreed son of a Nor’West bourgeois as “Captain-General of all the half-breeds of the northwest.” Young Métis were collected at Fort L’Esperance on the Qu’Appelle under Grant in the spring of 1816. There followed Duncan Cameron’s parading as a uniformed officer in Red River in the spring of 1815, and the deliberate harrying of the colonists until those who had not agreed to go to Canada were forced to leave. The war of 1812, in which the Nor’Westers had recaptured Michilimackinac and the Wisconsin country as far as the Mississippi, gave them military ideas, some spare military uniforms and equipment and the chance to pose as military officers themselves. But to destroy the Selkirk colony was a bigger operation. They had long used them, or their fathers, as bullies to harass rival traders. When the partners of the North West Company decided in 1814 that Selkirk’s colonists must be harried out of Red River, they turned to the Métis as their instrument. But the first generation of the Métis had also been taught to think of themselves as soldiers and the teaching had pleased them. The discipline and conduct of the great hunt on the buffalo plains of the Sioux was the first thing that made the Métis a “soldier”. Scouting for the Sioux and for buffalo, the conduct of the march, the making of camp, the approach to the herds and the running of the buffalo, were all carried out as an inbred drill, from which no serious departure was allowed, by a people naturally reckless and impatient of any restraint. All matters of regulation and discipline were settled in the council of the hunt, and a serious offence, such as running the buffalo alone or betraying the presence of the camp to the Sioux, might be punished by being turned loose on the plains without horse or bridle, a possible death sentence. Each of the captains acted in rotation as what might be called “officer of the day” and with his men policed the camp that day. The captain of the hunt had complete authority on the march or in the hunt. As has been often recounted, the hunt was organized at a rendezvous at Pembina or along the Pembina valley before moving out on to the plains by the election of a captain, or president of the hunt, of a council made up of ten captains, and by the choice by each captain of ten soldiers. He called himself so, thought of himself so, and in his own manner so behaved. As an occupation, particularly in the great summer hunt, it was highly organized and disciplined. The buffalo hunt was his most characteristic occupation. The Métis of Red River was a hunter and a trapper, a fisherman, a voyageur, by boat or cart brigade, even perforce a farmer, but above all, he was a horseman and a buffalo hunter. To tell the story of the battle is therefore to comment on the whole military history of the Métis from the “fur trade war” on the Assiniboine and the Red from 1815 to 1817 to their defeat by the Canadian militia at Batoche in 1885. įirst, however, it is to be noted that the fight at the Grand Coteau is also the most remarkable military feat of the “new nation” of the Métis and exhibits the peculiar tactics of their plains fighting at their highest development. ![]() It is the purpose of this paper to assemble the surviving accounts of the fight and to narrate how this action came to be fought and in what manner it was fought. This was the most formidable, as it was the last of the encounters between the buffalo hunters of Red River and the Sioux of the American plains. On 12 July 1851, a small band of Métis buffalo hunters from Saint Francois-Xavier on the Assiniboine River in the Red River Settlement encountered and on 13 and 14 July fought and defeated some hundreds of Sioux warriors on the first slope of the Grand Coteau of the Missouri southeast of Minot in what is now North Dakota. If you find any such errors, please inform us, indicating the document name and error. This online version was prepared using Optical Character Recognition software so that spelling and punctuation errors may have occurred inadvertently. As an historical document, the article may contain language and views that are no longer in common use and may be culturally sensitive in nature. We make this online version available as a free, public service. This article was published originally in MHS Transactions by the Manitoba Historical Society on the above date. MHS Transactions, Series 3, 1959-60 season
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