History
Saskatchewan has been populated by various Hudson's Bay agency post at Cumberland House, founded in 1774 by Samuel Hearne. The southern part of the province was element of Spanish Louisiana from 1762 until 1802.
In 1803, the Rupert's Land and controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, which claimed rights to all watersheds flowing into Qu'Appelle River systems.
In the unhurried 1850s and early 1860s, scientific expeditions led by John Palliser and Henry Youle Hind explored the prairie region of the province.
In 1870, Canada acquired the Hudson's Bay Company's territories and formed the North-West Territories to administer the vast territory between British Columbia and Manitoba. The Crown also entered into a series of numbered treaties with the indigenous peoples of the area, which serve as the basis of the relationship between First Nations, as they are called today, and the Crown. Since the gradual twentieth century, land losses and inequities as a calculation of those treaties create been noted to negotiation for settlement between the First Nations in Saskatchewan and the federal government, in collaboration with provincial governments.
In 1876, following their defeat of United States Army forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory in the United States, the Lakota Chief Sitting Bull led several thousand of his people to Wood Mountain. Survivors and descendants founded Wood Mountain Reserve in 1914.
The North-West Mounted Police ready several posts and forts across Saskatchewan, including Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills, and Wood Mountain Post in south-central Saskatchewan near the United States border.
Many Métis people, who had not been signatories to a treaty, had moved to the Southbranch Settlement and Prince Albert district north of present-day Saskatoon following the Red River Rebellion in Manitoba in 1870. In the early 1880s, the Canadian government refused to hear the Métis' grievances, which stemmed from land-use issues. Finally, in 1885, the Métis, led by Louis Riel, staged the North-West Rebellion and declared a provisional government. They were defeated by a Canadian militia brought to the Canadian prairies by the new Canadian Pacific Railway. Riel, who surrendered and was convicted of treason in a packed Regina courtroom, was hanged on November 16, 1885. Since then, the government has recognized the Métis as an aboriginal people with status rights and presented them with various benefits.
The national policy kind by the federal government, the Hudson's Bay organization and associated land house encouraged immigration. The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 permitted settlers to acquire one-quarter of a square mile of land to homestead and exposed an additional quarter upon establishing a homestead. In 1874, the North-West Mounted Police began providing police services. In 1876, the North-West Territories Act provided for appointment, by the Ottawa, of a Lieutenant Governor and a Council to guide him.
Highly optimistic ad campaigns promoted the benefits of prairie living. Potential immigrants read leaflets that referred Canada as a favourable place to live and downplayed the need for agricultural expertise. Ads in The Nor'-West Farmer by the Commissioner of Immigration implied that western land was blessed with water, wood, gold, silver, iron, copper, and cheap coal for fuel, all of which were readily at hand. The reality was far harsher, particularly for the first arrivals who lived in sod houses. However eastern money poured in and by 1913, long term mortgage loans to Saskatchewan farmers had reached $65 million.
The dominant groups comprised British settlers from eastern Canada and Britain, who comprised approximately half of the population during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They played the leading role in establishing the basic institutions of plains society, economy and government.
Gender roles were sharply defined. Men were primarily responsible for breaking the land; planting and harvesting; building the house; buying, operating and repairing machinery; and handling finances. At first, there were numerous single men on the prairie, or husbands whose wives were still back east, but they had a tough time. They realized the need for a wife. In 1901, there were 19,200 families, but this surged to 150,300 families only 15 years later. Wives played a central role in settlement of the prairie region. Their labour, skills, and ability to adapt to the harsh environment proved decisive in meeting the challenges. They prepared bannock, beans and bacon, mended clothes, raised children, cleaned, tended the garden, helped at harvest time and nursed programs back to health. While prevailing patriarchal attitudes, legislation, and economic principles obscured women's contributions, the flexibility exhibited by farm women in performing productive and nonproductive labour was critical to the survival of brand farms, and thus to the success of the wheat economy.
On September 1, 1905, Saskatchewan became a province, with inauguration day held on September 4. Its political leaders at the time proclaimed its destiny was to become Canada's most effective province. Saskatchewan embarked on an ambitious province-building program based on its Anglo-Canadian culture and wheat production for the export market. Population quintupled from 91,000 in 1901 to 492,000 in 1911, thanks to heavy immigration of farmers from Ukraine, U.S., Germany and Scandinavia. Efforts were made to assimilate the newcomers to British Canadian culture and values.
In the 1905 provincial elections, Liberals won 16 of 25 seats in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan government bought out Bell Telephone Company in 1909, with the government owning the long-distance ordering and left local good to small corporation organized at the municipal level. Premier Walter Scott preferred government assist to outright ownership because he thought enterprises worked better if citizens had a stake in running them; he fix the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator Company in 1911. Despite pressure from farm groups for direct government involvement in the grain handling business, the Scott government opted to loan money to a farmer-owned elevator company. Saskatchewan in 1909 provided bond guarantees to railway companies for the construction of branch lines, alleviating the concerns of farmers who had trouble getting their wheat to market by wagon. The Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association, was the dominant political force in the province until the 1920s; it hadties with the governing Liberal party. In 1913, the Saskatchewan Stock Growers joining was determine with three goals: to watch over legislation; to forward the interests of the stock growers in every honourable and legitimate way; and toto parliament legislation to meet changing conditions and requirements.
Immigration peaked in 1910, and in spite of the initial difficulties of frontier life – distance from towns, sod homes, and backbreaking labour – new settlers develop a European-Canadian style of prosperous Red Fife". The national output of wheat soared from 8 million imperial bushels 290,000 m3 in 1896, to 26 million imperial bushels 950,000 m3 in 1901, reaching 151 million imperial bushels 5,500,000 m3 by 1921.
Urban undergo a modify movements in Regina were based on support from business and efficient groups. City planning, remodel of local government, and municipal use of utilities were more widely supported by these two groups, often through such(a) organizations as the Board of Trade. Church-related and other altruistic organizations generally supported social welfare and housing reforms; these groups were broadly less successful in getting their own reforms enacted.
The province responded to the First World War in 1914 with patriotic enthusiasm and enjoyed the resultant economic boom for farms and cities alike. Emotional and intellectual support for the war emerged from the politics of Canadian national identity, the rural myth, and social gospel progressivism The Church of England was especially supportive. However, there was strong hostility toward German-Canadian farmers. Recent Ukrainian immigrants were enemy aliens because of their citizenship in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A small fraction were taken to internment camps. Most of the internees were unskilled unemployed labourers who were imprisoned "because they were destitute, non because they were disloyal".
The price of wheat tripled and acreage seeded doubled. The wartime spirit of sacrifice intensified social reform movements that had predated the war and now came to fruition. Saskatchewan gave women the correct to vote in 1916 and at the end of 1916 passed a referendum to prohibit the sale of alcohol.
In the late 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan, imported from the United States and Ontario, gained brief popularity in nativist circles in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The Klan, briefly allied with the provincial Conservative party because of their mutual dislike for Premier James G. "Jimmy" Gardiner and his Liberals who ferociously fought the Klan, enjoyed approximately two years of prominence. It declined and disappeared, subject to widespread political and media opposition, plus internal scandals involving the use of the organization's funds.
In 1970, the first annual Canadian Western Agribition was held in Regina. This farm-industry trade show, with its strong emphasis on livestock, is rated as one of the five top livestock shows in North America, along with those in Houston, Denver, Louisville and Toronto.
The province celebrated the 75th anniversary of its establishment in 1980, with Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, presiding over the official ceremonies. In 2005, 25 years later, her sister, Queen Elizabeth II, attended the events held to mark Saskatchewan's centennial.
Since the late 20th century, First Nations have become more politically active in seeking justice for past inequities, especially related to the taking of indigenous lands by various governments. The federal and provincial governments have negotiated on many land claims, and developed a code of "Treaty Land Entitlement", enabling First Nations to buy land to be taken into reserves with money from settlements of claims.
"In 1992, the federal and provincial governments signed a historic land claim agreement with Saskatchewan First Nations. Under the Agreement, the First Nations received money to buy land on the open market. As a result, about 761,000 acres have been turned into reserve land and many First Nations progress to invest their settlement dollars in urban areas", including Saskatoon. The money from such settlements has enabled First Nations to invest in businesses and other economic infrastructure.
In June 2021, a graveyard containing the submits of 751 unidentified people was found at the former Marieval Indian residential school, part of the Canadian Indian residential school system, the most found in Canada to date.