Fort Pitt

Founded in 1830, Fort Pitt was the major HUDSON'S BAY CO trading post between Forts Edmonton and Carlton (Saskatchewan), located at a large bend in the North Saskatchewan River just east of the modern Alberta-Saskatchewan border. It was one of 2 principal points for signing Treaty No 6 in 1876. On 14 and 15 April 1885, during the NORTH-WEST REBELLION, Chief BIG BEAR's Cree band besieged the fort. After a skirmish in which a policeman was killed, the natives permitted the fort's North-West Mounted Police detachment to flee downriver and then took the civilian occupants prisoner and looted the post.

Author BOB BEAL

Links to Other Sites
Fort Battleford National Historic Site
This Parks Canada site commemorates the 1876 North West Mounted Police headquarters in Battleford, Saskatchewan. Includes detailed notes about Big Bear, Poundmaker, the Cree, Sir Frederick Dobson Middleton, North-West Rebellion, the Battle of Cut Knife, and related topics.

The Canadian Register of Historic Places
Canada is home to a vast array of fascinating historical sites. Many of them are illustrated and described in this searchable online database of Canadian historic places that are of local, provincial, territorial, and national significance.

Transcript of "Inspector Dickens Journal" Fort Pitt, 1885.
A typed copy of "Inspector Francis Dickens's North West Mounted Police journal" from Fort Pitt in 1885 (more likely the Fort Pitt NWMP Post Journal). Recounts the events of the Resistance, the skirmish and subsequent abandonment of Fort Pitt by Dickens who was in command of the installation when hostilities broke out. From the University of Saskatchewan Library.

Medical Services in the North-West Rebellion of 1885
See a 1949 article about the mobilization of medical support services for troops involved in th 1885 North-West Rebellion. An archived article from the Canadian Medical Association Journal at the website for the US National Library of Medicine.