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Roughly 150km northwest of Saskatoon, the twin townships of NORTH BATTLEFORD and BATTLEFORD face each other across the wide valley of the North Saskatchewan River; the former a rough-and-ready industrial settlement, the latter a more sedate little place. From the middle of the eighteenth century, this stretch of the North Saskatchewan River near today's Battlefords formed a natural boundary between the Blackfeet to the south and the Cree to the north. These two groups were temporary trading partners, the Cree and their Ojibwa allies controlling the flow of European goods, the Blackfeet providing the horses. However, with the arrival of white traders at the start of the nineteenth century, the Blackfeet developed a flourishing trade direct with the Europeans, and by 1870 the Cree and Blackfeet were waging war across the entire length of their frontier, from the Missouri River to Fort Edmonton. In the 1870s, apprehensive after the Cypress Hills Massacre and the arrival of Sitting Bull and his warriors , the government speeded its policy of containment and control, determined to push the Plains Indians into reservations and thereby open the area for European settlers. Their chosen instrument was the North West Mounted Police, who in 1876 established a post at Battleford, which then became the regional capital. With the virtual extinction of the buffalo herds in the late 1870s, the Plains Indians began to starve and Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney used his control of emergency rations to force recalcitrant Indians onto the reservations. Several bands of Cree resisted the process, fighting a series of skirmishes at the same time as the Metis rebellion in Batoche, but by the mid-1880s their independence was over. Meanwhile, Battleford had lost its pre-eminence when the Canadian Pacific Railway routed its transcontinental line through Regina, which became the new capital in 1883. Twenty years later, its prospects were further damaged by the Canadian Northern Railway, which laid its tracks on the other side of the river, creating the rival town of North Battleford. Since then, Battleford has stagnated and shrunk, while its rival has become a moderately successful industrial and distribution centre, with a population of around fourteen thousand
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