What was the North-West Mounted Police?

The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a federal paramilitary police force established by the Canadian government in 1873 to assert Canadian sovereignty over the western prairies, suppress the whisky trade with Indigenous peoples, and prepare the way for orderly settlement. The force was established by the North-West Mounted Police Act (36 Victoria, c. 35) of May 23, 1873 under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. It became the Royal North-West Mounted Police in 1904 and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on February 1, 1920 when it merged with the Dominion Police.

The trigger for establishing the NWMP was the Cypress Hills Massacre of June 1, 1873, in which American wolf hunters and whisky traders killed about 20 Assiniboine people in the Cypress Hills of present-day Saskatchewan. The massacre revealed the absence of Canadian law enforcement in the newly acquired North-West Territories and the destabilising influence of American whisky traders operating from posts like Fort Whoop-Up (near present-day Lethbridge, Alberta). Macdonald's government accelerated the planned police force.

The NWMP's famous March West of 1874 was its founding mission. About 275 men under Commissioner George A. French marched from Fort Dufferin, Manitoba on July 8, 1874, crossing the prairies to the Sweet Grass Hills (in present-day Montana), then north to Fort Whoop-Up (which they reached on October 9, 1874 to find it abandoned) and establishing Fort Macleod (October 13, 1874), Fort Walsh (1875), Fort Calgary (August 1875), and Fort Edmonton (December 1875). The NWMP rapidly suppressed the whisky trade and established working relationships with most Indigenous nations of the prairies.

The NWMP played central roles in several consequential events. Officers including Inspector James Walsh established peaceful relations with Lakota chief Sitting Bull when about 5,000 Lakota fled to Canadian territory after the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876 to 1881). Officers participated in negotiating the numbered treaties (especially Treaty 6 in 1876 and Treaty 7 in 1877). The Force policed the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1881 to 1885) and fought in the North-West Rebellion of 1885 (notably at the Battle of Duck Lake on March 26, 1885). The NWMP was extended to the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush (1898 onward) and to the Arctic in the early 20th century. The RCMP today employs about 30,000 personnel and serves as the federal police, national police of three territories, and provincial police in eight provinces (excluding Ontario and Quebec, which have their own provincial forces). The Red Serge ceremonial uniform of the RCMP is a Canadian symbol.