Roughly 150km northwest of Saskatoon, the twin townships of NORTH
BATTLEFORD and BATTLEFORD face each other across the wide valley of the
North Saskatchewan River; the former a rough-and-ready industrial
settlement, the latter a more sedate little place. From the middle of
the eighteenth century, this stretch of the North Saskatchewan River
near today's Battlefords formed a natural boundary between the Blackfeet
to the south and the Cree to the north. These two groups were temporary
trading partners, the Cree and their Ojibwa allies controlling the flow
of European goods, the Blackfeet providing the horses. However, with the
arrival of white traders at the start of the nineteenth century, the
Blackfeet developed a flourishing trade direct with the Europeans, and
by 1870 the Cree and Blackfeet were waging war across the entire length
of their frontier, from the Missouri River to Fort Edmonton.
In the 1870s, apprehensive after the Cypress Hills Massacre and the
arrival of Sitting Bull and his warriors , the government speeded its
policy of containment and control, determined to push the Plains Indians
into reservations and thereby open the area for European settlers. Their
chosen instrument was the North West Mounted Police, who in 1876
established a post at Battleford, which then became the regional
capital.
With the virtual extinction of the buffalo herds in the late 1870s, the
Plains Indians began to starve and Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney used his
control of emergency rations to force recalcitrant Indians onto the
reservations. Several bands of Cree resisted the process, fighting a
series of skirmishes at the same time as the Métis rebellion in Batoche,
but by the mid-1880s their independence was over. Meanwhile, Battleford
had lost its pre-eminence when the Canadian Pacific Railway routed its
transcontinental line through Regina, which became the new capital in
1883. Twenty years later, its prospects were further damaged by the
Canadian Northern Railway, which laid its tracks on the other side of
the river, creating the rival town of North Battleford. Since then,
Battleford has stagnated and shrunk, while its rival has become a
moderately successful industrial and distribution centre, with a
population of around fourteen thousand
The townships
Situated on the east side of the river valley, North Battleford's
downtown core is arranged into streets running north-south and avenues
running west-east, forming a central gridiron that intersects with
Railway Avenue, which runs southeast to northwest |
