The North-Western Territory was a region of British North America extant until 1870 and named for where it lay in relation to Rupert's Land. Due to the lack of development, exploration, and cartographic limits of the time, the exact boundaries, ownership, and administration of the region were not precisely defined when the territory was extant. There is also not a definitive date when the British first asserted sovereignty over the territory. Maps vary in defining the boundaries of the territory; however, in modern usage, the region is generally accepted to be the region bounded by modern-day British Columbia, the continental divide with Rupert's Land, Russian America (later Alaska), and the Arctic Ocean. The territory covered what is now the Yukon, mainland Northwest Territories, northwes