The Rev. Griffiths Owen Corbett and the Red River Civil War of 1869-70

Abstract

G.F.G. Stanley and W.L. Morton have offered two contradictory and well documented interpretations of the first Riel resistance. Professor Stanley places the resistance within the framework of the frontier thesis. To him it was a 'manifestation ... of the problem of the frontier, namely the clash between primitive and civilized peoples. In all parts of the world, in South Africa, New Zealand and North America, the penetration of white settlement into territories inhabited by native peoples had led to friction and wars; Canadian expansion into the North-West led to a similar result. Here both half-breed population and Indian tribes rose in arms against Canadian intrusion and the imposition of an alien civilization.' Professor Morton disagrees with Stanley. For him 'what the Metis chiefly feared in 1869 was not the entrance of the agricultural frontier of Ontario into Red River - and they would have welcomed that of Quebec - but the sudden influx of immigrants of English speech and Protes...