The Northwest Territories Proclamation of 2 December 1869, which announces the organization of the territory
15 July 2021
The rather unimaginatively designated Northwest Territories were organized and formally named in 1869. Prior to this, the land was referred to informally as the Northwestern Territory. It was once much larger than it is today, including what are now the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, Yukon, and parts of British Columbia. When the territory of Yukon was taken from it in 1897, the northwest in the name became something of a misnomer but was retained.
The Northwest Territories, as a settler-colonist creation, has no corresponding Indigenous name. However, the capital Yellowknife, on the northern shore of Tideè (Great Lake, a.k.a. Great Slave Lake) is named after the First Nations band that live in the area. Yellowknife is a loose translation of the Tłįchǫ, or Dogrib, (Northern Athabaskan) T'satsąot'ınę, which literally means metal or copper people, a reference to their production and use of copper tools.
While the Northwest Territories was officially organized and named in 1869, use of the lower-case northwest territories to refer to the region dates to at least 1857, when the term appears in London’s Morning Chronicle of 27 August. Unsurprisingly, the article is about the natural resources in the region that the British can exploit:
By the undeniable authorities quoted in my previous communications to your journal, the fact is established that, in addition to many other useful minerals—gold, silver, cinnabar, copper, malachite, iron, lead, tin, coal, petroleum, sulphur, plumbago, soapstone, porcelain clay, gypsum, many beautiful varieties of jasper, and fine porphyry, tourmaline, cornelian, and brilliant and precious garnets have been found (some of them in vast quantities) in many parts of the Hudson’s Bay and north-west territories, the northern portions of which (intended by the Colonial-office to be left in the hands of the company for ever) being even more valuable in these products than the southern.
The North-West Territories Proclamation of 2 December 1869, which calls the territory officially into existence as of the previous day, reads in part:
And whereas her majesty has declared and named the first day of December instant as the day for the admission of Rupert’s land and the North-Western Territory into the union and Dominion of Canada; and whereas by virtue and in pursuance of the British North American Act of 1867, the Rupert’s land Act of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, the said act for the temporary government of Rupert’s land and the North-western Territory when united with Canada, and the said declaration and order of her majesty, Rupert’s land and the north-western territory have been admitted into union with, and have now become part of the dominion of Canada, and are henceforth to be known as the north-west Territories.
The Northwest Territories officially came into existence in 1869, and in that year the Red River Rebellion began, when Métis and First Nations allies under the leadership of Louis Riel who objected to the terms under which the land, known as Rupert’s Land, was being transferred from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada. An article in Washington, DC’s National Intelligencer of 20 December 1869 uses the proper name. The use of half-breeds in the article is a derogatory reference to the Métis. (The Métis are one of the three major groups of Indigenous peoples in Canada, the other two being the First Nations and the Inuit. The Métis are mix of French and Indigenous ancestry but who maintain a distinct culture.) Fort Garry is an old name for the city of Winnipeg:
Colonel Dennis, Dominion Surveyor General of the Northwest Territories, has succeeded in raising and arming some two hundred Swampy Indians and a number of their English half-breed relations, and that they have garrisoned the stone fort so as to form a junction with the Canadians, Sioux, and Minnesetas at Portage La Prairie, and will march upon the provisional force near Fort Garry.
The Red River Rebellion was suppressed in 1870, but the Canadian government ended up granting some of the demands of Riel and the Métis, including the formation of the separate province of Manitoba, which was carved out of the Northwest Territories.
Sources:
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
“The Hudson’s Bay and North-West Territories as a Field for British Enterprise.” Morning Chronicle (London), 27 August 1857, 3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), 20 December 1869, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
Pearce, Margaret Wickens. Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada (map). Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, 2017.
Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.
“The Red River Rebellion.” Bangor Daily Whig and Courier (Bangor, ME), 1 April 1870, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
“We Are T’satsąot’inę: Renaming Yellowknife.” Edgenorth.ca, 31 August 2016.
Yellowknives Dene First Nation.
Image credit: Northwest Territories Proclamation. Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN ID number 123044. Public domain image.