The geographical area now named Manitoba was originally inhabited as soon as the last ice age glaciers retreated in the southwest. The first exposed land was the Turtle Mountain area, where large numbers of petroforms and medicine wheels can be found. The first humans in southern Manitoba left behind pottery shards, spear and arrow heads, copper, petroforms, pictographs, fish and animal bones, and signs of agriculture along the Red River near Lockport. Eventually there were the aboriginal settlements of Ojibwa, Cree, Dene, Sioux, Mandan, and Assiniboine peoples, along with other tribes that entered the area to trade. There were many land trails made as a part of a larger native trading network on both land and water. The Whiteshell Provincial Park region along the Winnipeg River has many old petroforms and may have been a trading centre, or even a place of learning and sharing of knowledge for over 2000 years. The cowry shells and copper are proof of what was traded as a part of a large trading network to the oceans, and to the larger southern native civilizations along the Mississippi and in the south and southwest. In Northern Manitoba there are areas that were mined for quartz to make arrow heads. For thousands of years there have been humans living in this region, and there are many clues about their ways of life. Ongoing research will be needed to uncover many more artifacts for a more detailed understanding of past peoples and cultures in the Province.

Henry Hudson, in 1611, was one of the first Europeans to sail into what is now known as Hudson Bay. The Nonsuch ship that sailed into Hudson Bay in 1668-1669 was the first trading voyage that led to the formation of the Hudson's Bay Company. The Hudson's Bay Company was given the fur trading rights to the entire Hudson's Bay watershed, that covers land in what is now known as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Minnesota, North Dakota, and more. This watershed was named Rupert's Land, after Prince Rupert who helped to form the Hudson's Bay Company. Other traders and explorers from the British Isles eventually came to the Hudson's Bay shores and went south along many northern Manitoba Rivers. The first European to reach present-day central and southern Manitoba was Sir Thomas Button, who travelled upstream along the Nelson River and Lake Winnipeg in 1612 and may have reached somewhere along the edge of the prairies where he reported of seeing a bison. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, visited the Red River Valley in the 1730s as part of opening the area for French exploration and exploitation. Many other French and Metis explorers came from the east and the south by going down the Winnipeg River and down the Red River. An important French-Canadian population (Franco-Manitobains) still lives in Manitoba, especially in the Saint-Boniface district of eastern Winnipeg. Fur trading forts were built by both the NorthWest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company along the many rivers and lakes, and there was often fierce competition with each other in more southern areas.

There are a few possible sources for the name "Manitoba". One is the Assiniboine words "Mini" and "tobow" meaning "Lake of the Prairie". The other more likely source is the Cree word "maniotwapow" meaning "the strait of the spirit or manitobau". This latter name is derived from the sound produced by pebbles on a beach on Manitoba Island in Lake Manitoba. This noise is linked to the superstition among the Assiniboine of the "manitou" (or Spirit) beating a drum to create the noise. Another story refers to "Manitou" and "abah" or the Spirit which sits or is located somewhere in southern Manitoba.

The territory was won by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1763 as part of the French and Indian War, and this was a part of Rupert's Land, the immense trading monopoly territory of the Hudson's Bay Company that was the entire watershed that flows into Hudson's Bay. Most rivers and water in Manitoba eventually flow north, not south or east as is commonly assumed, and empty into Hudson's Bay. The Hudson Bay Archives is located within Winnipeg, Manitoba, and preserves the rich history of the fur trading era that occurred along the major water routes of the Rupert's Land area.


The founding of the first agricultural community and settlements in 1811 by Lord Selkirk, north of the area which is now downtown Winnipeg, resulted in conflict between the British colonists and the Métis who lived and traded near there. Twenty colonists, including the governor, were killed by the Métis in the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816. There was also one Metis man killed as well. Many fur trading forts were also attacked by each side over the many years. Even today, the Metis people are making land claims that they say are a part of what was promised to them in the 1800's.

When Rupert's Land was ceded to Canada in 1869 and incorporated into the Northwest Territories, a lack of attention to Métis concerns led their leader Louis Riel to establish a provisional government as part of The Red River Rebellion. However, Louis Riel was pursued by Garnet Wolseley because of the rebellion, and he fled into exile. He was eventually hanged after being captured in Saskatchewan. Negotiations between the provisional 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 - it was known as the "postage stamp province." It grew progressively, absorbing land from the Northwest Territories until it attained its current size by reaching 60°N in 1912.

Numbered Treaties were signed in the late 1800's with the chiefs of various tribes that lived in the area now known as Manitoba. These treaties made quite specific promises of land for every family, medicine chests, yearly payments, etc. This led to a reserve system under the jurisdicion of the Federal Government. Presently, there are still land claim issues because the proper amount of land that was promised to the native peoples was not given in all cases.

The Manitoba Schools Question showed the deep divergence of cultural values in the territory. The French thought they had been guaranteed a state supported separate school system but instead a grass roots political movement among Protestants in 1888-90 demanded the end of French schools. In 1890 the Manitoba legislature passed a law abolishing French as an official language of the province, and removing funding for Catholic schools. The French Catholic minority asked the federal Government for support; however the Orange Order and other anti-Catholic forces mobilized nationwide. The Conservatives proposed remedial legislation to over-ride Manitoba's legislation but they in turn were blocked by Liberals, led by Wilfrid Laurier who opposed the remedial legislation on the basis of provincial rights. Once elected Prime Minister in 1896, Laurier proposed a compromise stating that Catholics in Manitoba could have a Catholic education if there were enough students to warrant it, on a school-by-school basis. Tensions over language remained high in Manitoba (and nationwide) for decades to come.

Winnipeg was one of the 4th largest cities in Canada in the early 1900's. This boom town grew quickly from the late 1800's to the early 1900's. There was a lot of outside investors, immigration, railways, trains, and business was booming. Even today, one can see the many old mansions and estates that belonged to Winnipeg's ever growing wealthy class. When the Manitoba Legislature was built, it was expected that Manitoba would have a population of 3 million quite soon. Just around the time of World War I, the quickly growing city began to cool down as the large amounts of money were no longer invested to the same degree as before the war. Winnipeg eventually fell behind in growth when other major cities in Canada began to boom ahead, such as Calgary today.

By 1916, in wartime, national unity was at stake. Out of a population of 500,000, there were 30,000 French speakers and 100,000 speakers of German, Ukrainian, Polish and other immigrant tongues. Anglophones insisted on an English-only policy, including a repeal of the compromise that had been worked out on the School Question. The plan was to strengthen the education ministry, upgrade the quality of education, and impose a much stronger attendance law. As the education minister explained:

It is necessary to deal with this law the bilingual clause both in our own interests and in the interests of the strangers within our gates who have come to make their homes with us with the purpose of becoming a part of this nation. The first essential to individual progress in any land is to know the language of the country. In an English-speaking country, as this is, a knowledge of English is more necessary than a knowledge of arithmetic. No matter what a man's attainments may be, the doors of opportunity are closed to him if he has not a knowledge of English, the common tongue. . . . We are building for the Canada of tomorrow, and our common school is one of the most important factors in the work. In this Dominion we are building up, under the British flag, a new nationality. We come from many lands and cast in our lot, and from these various factors there must evolve a new nationality which shall be simply Canadian and British. Morton p 352

The strike, then, began with two immediate aims and two subsidiary but increasingly important aspects. One aim was the redress of legitimate grievances with respect to wages and collective bargaining; the other was the trial of a new instrument of economic action, the general strike, the purpose of which was to put pressure on the employers involved in the dispute through the general public. The first subsidiary aspect was that the general strike, however, might be a prelude to the seizure of power in the community by Labour, and both the utterances and the policies of the O.B.U. leaders pointed in that direction. The second subsidiary aspect was that, as a struggle for leadership in the Labour movement was being waged as the strike began, it was not made clear which object, the legitimate and limited one, or the revolutionary and general one, was the true purpose of the strike. It is now apparent that the majority of both strikers and strike leaders were concerned only to win the strike. The general public at large, however, subjected to the sudden coercion of the general strike, was only too likely to decide that a revolutionary seizure of power was in view. Morton 365-6