Manitoba began to be settled shortly after the War of 1812, when Lord Selkirk established his Red River Colony. The Scotch Highlanders, Swiss, and others whom he planted there did not prosper, and many of them eventually drifted down into the United States, taking an active part in the formation of Minnesota. Around this nucleus, however, there gradually grew an incongruous and isolated settlement made up of three elements that had almost nothing in common; the Scotch, the French-Canadians, and the half-breeds. In 1849 the Red River Settlement was credited with 5391 people. With the establishment of steam navigation on the Red River, and the official creation of Winnipeg, both of which occurred in 1862, development began on a larger scale.
A provisional government was given to the territory in 1869, and from time to time land was generously allotted to the early white settlers, to the half-breeds, and to the Hudson's Bay Company. Thereafter the province grew slowly, from the natural increase of its founders and from a Nordic migration from Ontario and from the neighboring parts of the United States, until the mixed European immigration of the last half-century changed somewhat the character of the population. These latter now account for one-third of the whole.
The proportion of these non-Nordic Europeans, from southern or central Europe, is three times as great as the European immigration from either northern or western Europe. If this immigration continues in like proportions, Manitoba, like the other prairie provinces, is in danger of being lost to the Nordics.
Saskatchewan has a larger American-born population than Manitoba, one resident in every eight having first seen the light of day under the American flag. But it has a still larger recent European immigration amounting to nearly 40 per cent of the total population of the province. A bare half of the people of Saskatchewan are of British origin.
Alberta has both a somewhat smaller European element and the largest American-born contingent of any of the provinces, amounting to one in six. Many English of a fine type have settled there.
In all the Prairie Provinces the French-Canadian represents scarcely more than one in twenty of the population.