Treaty No.3 (1873)

After some difficulties and almost three years of protracted negotiations, the “North-West Angle Treaty,” or Treaty No.3, was signed on 3 Oct. 1873. Alexander Morris, lieutenant governor of the North-West Territories, using a judicious balance of threats and cajolements, succeeded in convincing the Anishinaabe of the Lake of the Woods area, in what is now northwestern Ontario, of the Canadian government’s determination finally to settle with them. Although two earlier treaties had been signed in 1871 by Lieutenant Governor Adams George Archibald with the Indigenous people in what is now southern Manitoba, Treaty No.3 was the prototype for those that followed.