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One of the earliest suggestions that a mounted police force be formed to bring law and order to the western plains was from Thomas Blakiston. He noted that liquor traffic was demoralizing the Indians and that it was necessary that some civic government and laws, with a way to enforce them, be put in place.
Blakiston recommended a "military police, somewhat on the system of the Irish Constabulary. During the nineteenth century the Royal Irish Constabulary served as a model, upon which colonial police forces were patterned throughout the British Empire. In frontier areas it seemed useful to have a force with military capabilities but also with judicial power to act as peace officers.
Prime Minister John A. Macdonald began plans for such a force of 200 men in the winter of 1869-70 as part of Canada's preparation to take control over lands which the Hudson's Bay Company was giving up after 200 years.
In 1870 most of the north-west (the land draining into the Hudson's Bay) was transferred over to Canada but although there was ever more research being done on how to police such a large area with few men, nothing was happening.
Early in June, 1873, a party of American wolf hunters from Fort Benton, Montana, shot and killed about thirty Assiniboine Indians on Canadian territory in the Cypress Hills. The Cypress Hills Massacre as it came to be called started a wave of reaction that finally forced the government into action. A privy council order was passed on August 30,1873 which brought the North West Mounted Police into existence. Finally, there was a legally constituted body to maintain law and order on the western prairies and the first commissioner would be George A. French.
The next great challenge would be how to get the NWMP to the notorious Fort Whoop-up which appeared to be the Canadian headquarters for the American traders.