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North-West Mounted Police

Former Canadian police force

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 18, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada. The Red River Rebellion and reports of lawlessness in the West, demonstrated by the subsequent Cypress Hills Massacre and fears of United States military incursions into Canada's new hinterland had pushed the Canada government to provide the means of enforcement of law and order. The NWMP, later renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, combined military, police and judicial functions along similar lines to the Royal Irish Constabulary. A small, mobile police force was chosen as the best way to reduce potential for tensions with the United States and with First Nations. The NWMP uniforms included red coats deliberately reminiscent of British and Canadian military uniforms.

Editorial summary

“North-West Mounted Police” enters the record as former Canadian police force. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what North-West, Mounted and Police can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1873, 1870—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around North-West, Mounted and Police.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“North-West Mounted Police” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, North-West, Mounted and Police provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1873 and 1870.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “North-West Mounted Police”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow North-West Mounted Police primary sources, North-West Mounted Police archive and North-West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “North-West Mounted Police” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.