The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a police force that became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
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The police was established by an act of legislation from the Temporary North-West Council the first territorial government of the Northwest Territories.[1] The Act was approved by the Government of Canada and established on May 23, 1873, by Queen Victoria, on the advice of her Canadian Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, with the intent of bringing law and order to, and asserting sovereignty over, the Northwest Territories. The need was particularly urgent given reports of American whiskey traders, in particular those of Fort Whoop-Up, causing trouble in the region, culminating in the Cypress Hills Massacre. The new force was initially to be called the North West Mounted Rifles, but this proposal was rejected as sounding too militaristic in nature, which Macdonald feared would antagonize both aboriginals and Americans; however, the force was organized along the lines of a cavalry regiment in the British Army, and was to wear red uniforms.
The NWMP was modelled directly on the Royal Irish Constabulary, a civilian paramilitary armed police force with both mounted and foot elements under the authority of what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[2][3] First NWMP commissioner, Colonel George Arthur French visited Ireland to learn its methods.[3]
The initial force, commanded by Commissioner French, was assembled at Fort Dufferin, Manitoba. They departed on July 8, 1874, on a march to what is now Alberta.
The group comprised 22 officers, 287 men – called constables and sub-constables – 310 horses, 67 wagons, 114 ox-carts, 18 yoke of oxen, 50 cows and 40 calves.[4] A pictorial account of the journey was recorded in the diary of Henri Julien, an artist from the Canadian Illustrated News, who accompanied the expedition.[5]
Their destination was Fort Whoop-Up, a notorious whiskey trading post located at the junction of the Belly and Oldman Rivers. Upon arrival at Whoop-Up and finding it abandoned the troop continued a few miles west and established headquarters on an island in the Oldman, naming it Fort MacLeod.
Historians have theorized that failure of the 1874 March West would not have completely ended the Canadian federal government's vision of settling the country's western plains, but could have delayed it for many years. It could also have encouraged the Canadian Pacific Railway to seek a more northerly route for its transcontinental railway that went through the well-mapped and partially settled valley of the North Saskatchewan River, touching on Prince Albert, Battleford and Edmonton, and through the Yellowhead Pass, as originally proposed by Sandford Fleming.[6] This would have offered no economic justification for the existence of cities like Brandon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Medicine Hat, and Calgary, which could, in turn, have tempted American expansionists to make a play for the flat, empty southern regions of the Canadian prairies.
The NWMP's early activities included containing the whiskey trade and enforcing agreements with the First Nations peoples; to that end, the commanding officer of the force arranged to be sworn in as a justice of the peace, which allowed for magisterial authority within the Mounties' jurisdiction. In the early years, the force's dedication to enforcing the law on behalf of the First Nations peoples impressed the latter enough to encourage good relations between them and the Crown. In the summer of 1876, Sitting Bull and thousands of Sioux fled from the US Army towards what is now southern Saskatchewan, and James Morrow Walsh of the NWMP was charged with maintaining control in the large Sioux settlement at Wood Mountain. Walsh and Sitting Bull became good friends, and the peace at Wood Mountain was maintained. In 1885, the NWMP helped to quell the North-West Rebellion led by Louis Riel. They suffered particularly heavy losses during the Battle of Duck Lake, but saw little other active combat.
In 1896, concerned about the influence of American miners and the ongoing liquor trade, the Canadian government sent inspector Charles Constantine to report on conditions in the Yukon. Constantine correctly forecast a coming gold rush and urgently recommended sending a force to secure Canadian sovereignty there and collect customs duties; he returned the following year with a force of 20 men. Under the command of Constantine, and his successor in 1898, the more famous Sam Steele, the NWMP distinguished itself during the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896, making it one of the most peaceful and orderly such affairs in history. The NWMP not only enforced criminal law, but also collected customs duties, established a number of rules such as the "ton of goods" requirement for prospectors to enter the Yukon to avoid another famine, mandatory boat inspections for those wanting to travel the Yukon River, and created the Blue Ticket used to expel undesirables from the Klondike. The Mounties did tolerate certain illegal activities, such as gambling and prostitution, and the force did not succeed in its attempt to establish order and Canadian sovereignty in Skagway, Alaska, at the head of the Lynn Canal, instead creating the customs post at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass. At that same time, the dissolution of the NWMP was being discussed in the House of Commons, but the gold rush prospectors were so impressed by the conduct of the Mounted Police that the force became world famous and its continuation was ensured.
The North-West Mounted Police's jurisdiction was extended northward to the Yukon Territory in 1895 and then again in 1903 to the Arctic coast, with the establishment of a post at Cape Fullerton. In June 1904, the prefix "Royal" was conferred on the NWMP by King Edward VII.[7] Jurisdiction was extended to the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, and to Manitoba's new annexation in 1912. During World War I the RNWMP was responsible for "border patrols, surveillance of enemy aliens, and enforcement of national security regulations".[7] In 1917, provincial policing contracts were terminated, and the RNWMP was responsible only for federal policing in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Territories. Come 1918, however, enforcement was once again extended to all four Western Provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba).[7] A squadron was deployed to Vladivostok, Russia in late 1918 as part of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force. Six months later, in June 1919, the RNWMP was called in to repress the general strike in Manitoba's capital, Winnipeg, where officers fired into a crowd of strikers, killing two and causing injury to thirty others. Another strike of that scale was never seen again, but clashes between the RNWMP and strikers continued; Mounties killed three strikers in 1931, when striking coal miners from Bienfait, Saskatchewan demonstrated in nearby Estevan. These incidents did not help the image of the RNWMP, which, since the end of First World War, was being looked at as an outdated institution, more suited to the 19th century frontier than with an industrialising 20th century Canada.
Aylesworth Perry served as Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police from 1900 to 1922. It was in this period that the force was faced, again, with dissolution, but was saved in 1920 when it merged with the Dominion Police and was renamed as the "Royal Canadian Mounted Police".