In 1867, the British parliament adopted the British North America Act. It combined Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (made up of portions of what are now Ontario and Québec) into a new political entity: the Dominion of Canada. Not quite colony, not quite independent state, Canada was an imperial creation and remained part of the British Empire, which meant that London, not Ottawa, would set foreign policy, at least in the nation’s early years. The confederation of the British North American colonies came about in response to a series of pressures and opportunities, including
• the desire to expand intercolonial trade;
• the need to improve defence because Britain’s unwillingness to officially support the victorious Union side in the American Civil War had increased border tensions and threatened trade with the us; and
• the potential to capitalize on economic opportunities in what were then Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) lands to the west.
Much of the pressure came from England. The British Colonial Office wanted to rid itself of the costs associated with settler colonies such as Canada. Granting or cajoling them into independence would reduce those costs, while ensuring that the colonies remained open to investments of British capital. At the same time, British and central Canadian politicians and investors had a real interest in the creation of a transcontinental state, through the acquisition of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company and by luring British Columbia into Confederation with the promise of a continental rail link.
The acquired lands would be populated with settlers from Europe and Upper Canada, who would buy goods produced in central Canada, and would ship their harvests by rail to western and eastern ports and on to international markets, and so provide the country with export earnings. Failure to act quickly was risky: the rapidly expanding United States might well claim the territory first as part of its own so-called manifest destiny, depriving the empire of a transcontinental rail link, assured supplies of coal, strategic harbours, and a secure food supply.
Colonial enthusiasm for such a union rose and fell. In 1864, the British-appointed governors of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island managed to persuade the political leaders of each of their colonies to meet in Charlottetown to discuss a less ambitious Maritime Union. They were joined by the leadership of the Province of Canada, which presented a proposal for a federation of all the British North American colonies, with the eventual goal of westward expansion. This proposal would bring about a break in the political deadlock that had plagued the Province of Canada since 1841, when French-speaking, largely Catholic, Lower Canada and English-speaking, largely Protestant, Upper Canada had been joined in a single colony. It would also create an economically sound and politically stable state that would attract the sort of investment required for the further exploitation of the Canadian Northwest. The proposal met with support and formed the basis of the Confederation that soon followed.1
The new dominion lost no time in beginning its westward expansion. The parliament was elected in August 1867, and, in December, it adopted a measure calling on Britain to unite the Hudson’s Bay Company territory with Canada.2 Colonizing the “North-West”—as this territory came to be known—meant colonizing the over 40,000 Indigenous people who lived there.3 There were three central elements to the Canadian government’s colonial policy: the Indian Act, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Treaties it negotiated with First Nations in western and northern Canada. This chapter outlines the development of the Indian Act and the Indian Affairs department, and then describes the Aboriginal response to Canada’s colonization of the North-West. That response led to the eventual creation of the Province of Manitoba, the negotiation of the Treaties, and a Canadian military intervention that served as the first measure in a sustained policy of social and economic regimentation and marginalization of Aboriginal people.
Federal government responsibility for “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” came from section 91 (24) of the British North America Act (now the Constitution Act of 1867). In Parliament, Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, described the government’s responsibility to Indians as one of “guardianship as of persons underage, incapable of the management of their own affairs.”4 This official attitude demonstrates the backward steps taken in Aboriginal policy since the days when First Nations were seen as respected and important allies whose support was to be sought and maintained.
Even though the legislation referred to as the “Indian Act” was not adopted until 1876, the Canadian parliament began regulating the lives of Aboriginal people shortly after Confederation. In 1868, the government adopted the Act to provide for the organization of the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada and for the Administration of the Affairs of the Indians. This law essentially incorporated much of the previous Province of Canada’s legislation regarding Indian people, applying it to the country as a whole. This practice of adopting pre-Confederation approaches was continued in 1869, when Parliament adopted An Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians.5 This Act gave Canada the authority to
• issue location titles or tickets for tracts of reserve land (These tickets associated individuals with specific tracts of land. This was the first step to private ownership of land and the dissolution of the reserves.);
• establish elected band councils (whose bylaws had to be approved by the federal government);
• remove from office those band councillors believed to be unfit for reasons of dishonesty, intemperance, or immorality;
• grant to any Indian who “appears to be a safe and suitable person for becoming a proprietor of land” a “life estate in the land which has been or may be allotted to him within the Reserve belonging to the tribe band or body of which he is a member”; and
• require an Indian woman who married “any other than an Indian” to “cease to be an Indian within the meaning of this Act.” Furthermore, the children of such marriage would not “be considered as Indians within the meaning of this Act.”
Writing about these two Acts in 1870, Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs William Spragge made it clear that the purpose of the legislation was to undermine First Nations’ self-government and foster assimilation.
The Acts framed in the years 1868 and 1869, relating to Indian affairs, were designed to lead the Indian people by degrees to mingle with the white race in the ordinary avocations of life. It was intended to afford facilities for electing, for a limited period, members of bands to manage, as a Council, local matters; that intelligent and educated men, recognized as chiefs, should carry out the wishes of the male members of mature years in each band, who should be fairly represented in the conduct of their internal affairs.
Thus establishing a responsible, for an irresponsible system, this provision, by law, was designed to pave the way to the establishment of simple municipal institutions.6
When it was adopted in 1876, the Indian Act (formally An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians)7 brought together all the laws dealing with Indians into a single piece of legislation. It contained the following key provisions.
It defined Indians: An Indian was a male of Indian blood belonging to a tribe. His wife and children were also Indians. Indian women lost their status as Indians under the Act if they married a non-Indian. Furthermore, her children by such a marriage would not have status. This discriminatory provision ignored traditional Aboriginal marriage practices and was to have a long-lasting disruptive impact on Aboriginal families and communities.
It defined Indian bands: A band was defined legally as a body of Indians holding land or a reserve in common “of which the legal title is vested in the Crown,” or for whom funds were held in trust.
It regulated the sale of Indian lands: Reserve lands were held in trust by the Crown and could not be mortgaged or seized for debts. This land could be surrendered only to the Crown and only if a majority of male adult band members approved of the surrender at a special meeting. Each surrender required the approval of the minister. As a disincentive for the band to surrender land for immediate gain, no more than 10% of the sale money was paid directly to the band and the rest was held in trust.
It defined acceptable forms of band government: Despite the fact that Aboriginal people governed themselves in a wide variety of ways across the country, the Indian Act sought to establish a system of an elected chief and council on reserves. Although hereditary chiefs (or “life chiefs,” as the Act described them) living at the time of the Act could hold their position until death or resignation, the minister could dismiss the band council or councillors for dishonesty, intemperance, immorality, or incompetency. Much like municipalities, band councils were given responsibility for roads, bridges, schools, public buildings, granting of lots, and suppression of vice on reserves.
It placed limitations on Indian people: For example, they could not acquire homesteads in Manitoba or the North-West Territories.
It sought enfranchisement as an ultimate goal: Under the Act, a band member seeking enfranchisement had to have band approval and been granted an allotment of land from his or her band. The individual would also have to convince Indian Affairs of his or her “integrity, morality and sobriety.” At the end of a three-year probationary period, such a person would (if their conduct were judged to be satisfactory) receive reserve land. Also, a band member who earned a university degree, qualified as a doctor or lawyer, teacher, or was ordained as a Christian priest, was to be enfranchised.
Enfranchisement did not, in itself, grant an entitlement to vote, which, during much of this period, was subject to provincial regulation. Rather, it removed all distinctions between the legal rights and liabilities of Indians and those of other British subjects, as Canadians were still British subjects. In applying for enfranchisement, an Indian had to abandon reserve and Treaty rights. He would then receive an allotment of reserve lands, which would be subject to assessment and taxation.
If this policy were successful, the federal government would gradually eliminate its obligations to individual Indians as well as its Treaty obligations. It directly impacted the reserves, since it was meant to break them up. It affected the Treaties, because if there were no status Indians, there were no more Treaty obligations. The policy was never popular with First Nations peoples. Between 1857 and 1920, other than women who lost their Indian status upon marriage, only 250 “Indians” were enfranchised.8
The 1876 Indian Act made little reference to education, other than giving band councils responsibility for building and maintaining schoolhouses. A provision added in 1880 required that the teacher be of the same religion as a majority of the band members, provided that the minority (be they Catholic or Protestant) have a separate school.9
Politicians justified the Indian Act as a necessary instrument for protecting First Nations people from exploitation while civilizing them, but, in reality, it was a tool for the autocratic administration of their lives. In the coming years, the Act was regularly amended to further strengthen the government’s ability to control Indian people. For example, in the years prior to 1900, the Act was amended to
• give the minister of Indian Affairs the power to replace traditional leadership with elected councils (If a traditionally selected leadership was replaced in this way by an elected council, the elected council was to serve as the official representative of the band.) (1880);10
• allow for the denial of band membership to children born out of wedlock (1880);11
• allow the minister to ban anyone deposed from office from seeking re-election for a period of three years (1895);12
• authorize Indian agents as justices of the peace (1881);13
• make it a crime to induce “three or more Indians, non-treaty Indians, or half-breeds apparently acting in concert,
- To make any request or demand of any agent or servant of the Government in a riotous, routous, disorderly or threatening manner, or in a manner calculated to cause a breach of the peace; or—
- To do an act calculated to cause a breach of the peace.” (1884);14
• give the minister the power to outlaw the sale or gifting of certain kinds of ammunition to Indians in Manitoba and the North-West Territories (1884);15
• make it illegal to participate in traditional West Coast First Nations ceremonies (the Potlatch ceremony and Tamanawas dance) (1884);16
• allow the minister to enfranchise a man without band approval (1884);17
• allow the Department of Indian Affairs to prohibit or regulate the sale (or any other form of exchange) by any Indian or Indian band of grain and root crops and other produce grown on reserves in western Canada (1881);18
• make the game laws of Manitoba and the Territories applicable to Indians (1890);19
• give the minister increasing authority to lease lands without band consent (1894, 1895, 1898);20
• forbid ceremonies that included the giving away of “money, goods or articles” or “the wounding mutilation of the dead or living body of any human being or animal” (1895);21 and
• increase the minister’s ability to spend band funds without band approval (1898).22
In short, the Indian Act sought to place First Nations individuals and communities, their lands, and their finances under federal government control. Real authority on a reserve rested not with the elected band chiefs and councils, whose powers were already limited and who could be dismissed by the government, but with the federally appointed Indian agents.23 From its beginning in 1876, the Act, in effect, made Indians wards of the state, unable to vote in provincial or federal elections or enter the professions if they did not surrender their status, and severely limited their freedom to participate in spiritual and cultural practices. It restricted how they could sell the produce from their farms and prevented them from taking on debt without either government approval or the surrender of their legal status as Indians.24 Rather than protecting Indian land, the Act became the instrument through which reserves were drastically reduced in size or relocated.
The Indian Act remained the dominant piece of Aboriginal legislation in Canada, but other key pieces of legislation that had implications for Aboriginal people were adopted in the nineteenth century. The Electoral Franchise Act of 1885, for example, gave the vote to adult male Indians over the age of twenty-one, living in eastern Canada, who possessed improved land on reserves. Prior to the adoption of this Act, federal voting rights were established by provincial laws, which meant that Indians who met property qualifications were allowed to vote in some provinces but not in others. When the federal Act was repealed in 1898, provincial governments were once more given the right to determine who could vote in federal elections. They used this power to deny or restrict the voting rights of First Nations people. It would not be until 1960 that First Nations people received the unqualified right to vote in federal elections in Canada.25
The Department of Indian Affairs developed out of what had come to be known as the pre-Confederation Indian Branch of the government of the Province of Canada (Ontario and Québec). That branch, which could trace its history back to Sir William Johnson’s Indian Department, had become the Crown Lands Department in 1860.26 After Confederation, the branch’s responsibilities were extended to the Maritimes.27 It was initially part of the Department of the Secretary of State, which was responsible for relations with Britain as well for the civil service and the North-West Mounted Police. In 1873, the Indian Branch was transferred to the Department of the Interior. The other two branches in the department were the Dominion Lands Branch and the Geological Survey of Canada. The Department of the Interior also had responsibility for the North-West Territories (which included most of what are now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Nunavut).28
From this point on, the minister responsible for administering Aboriginal peoples and their lands was also responsible for recruiting settlers and acquiring land—Aboriginal land—on which immigrants could settle. To do this, the Department of the Interior would continue with policies that had been established in the pre-Confederation period: it would gain access to the land through Treaties, isolate Aboriginal people on reserves and in residential schools, impose restrictive political control through legislation, and work towards assimilation, so as to be rid of any political or economic obligation to Aboriginal peoples.
It was not until 1880 that an amendment to the Indian Act created a separate Department of Indian Affairs. Yet, the link with the Department of the Interior continued, as it became customary to place both departments under the responsibility of the same minister. In keeping with pre-Confederation practice, the Minister of Indian Affairs was officially referred to as the “Superintendent General of Indian Affairs” until 1936. To facilitate its work, Indian Affairs divided the nation up into “superintendencies,” each with its own superintendent who oversaw the work of up to five Indian agents. Superintendencies were large: in the 1870s, there were only two for all of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, and two more for all of British Columbia. In western Canada, a full-time Indian commissioner provided direction to the department’s work in the region from 1873 to 1932 (the position was temporarily abolished from 1909 to 1920).29
Decision making was highly centralized. From 1874 to 1893, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Lawrence Vankoughnet controlled the day-to-day operations of the department. (For reasons of clarity and consistency, this report refers to the position as “Minister of Indian Affairs” rather than “Superintendent General of Indian Affairs.”) Having started as a clerk with the Crown Lands department in 1861, Vankoughnet was familiar with departmental policy, and benefited from a long-standing friendship with Sir John A. Macdonald, but he had little direct experience with Aboriginal people. His driving concerns were to maintain personal control over the workings of the department and to limit expenses. This policy would frustrate staff in the field, who were unable to respond quickly to developing situations.30 For Aboriginal people who were facing starvation due to often lethal epidemics and to the collapse of their traditional economy, the government’s delay and focus on controlling costs could have tragic consequences.
Although the department’s senior field staff often clashed with their masters in Ottawa, their attitudes towards Aboriginal people bore all the hallmarks of colonialism. Indian Commissioner Joseph Provencher was dismissed in 1878 after an inquiry that concluded he had neglected his duties, provided poor-quality goods to Indians, and sought to use his position to enrich himself.31 Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney referred to the 3,000 Cree who were attempting to establish a reserve in the Cypress Hills as “a large number of worthless and lazy Indians, the concourse of malcontents and reckless Indians from all the bands in the Territories.” Removing them from the Cypress Hills and “scattering them through the country” would be, in his opinion, “a solution of one of our main difficulties.32 Hayter Reed, a future deputy minister of Indian Affairs, described the First Nations people he encountered while he was the Indian agent at Battleford as the “scum of the Plains.”33 Arguments that Canada’s Indian policy was well-intentioned and humanitarian in nature must be evaluated against the harsh, condescending, and, at times, self-interested statements of the individuals who framed and implemented that policy.
The department had two sources of funding: the government’s annual budgetary allocation, and the interest on funds held in trust for bands. By 1890, well over half of the department’s budget was spent in the West.34
In the North-West Territories, Indian Affairs officials worked closely with the North-West Mounted Police, which had been established in 1873. Modelled on the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Mounted Police was intended to establish order on the Prairies, paving the way for settlement and the construction of the railway. Its immediate tasks were to control American whiskey traders who had begun to operate in Canada, and to establish a relationship with Aboriginal people as a prelude to their eventual ‘civilization.’35 The police were empowered to administer British and Canadian laws—laws that had been neither made nor approved by people who lived in the North-West. The commissioner of the force held an automatic seat on the Territorial Council that had been established to govern the territory, and police force members served as magistrates. As a result, the Mounted Police was involved in passing legislation, policing, and the judicial system.36 From the time of their arrival in the West, police were present at all the Treaty negotiations, serving as a silent reminder of Canada’s military potential.37
The colonization of the North-West did not go smoothly. From the outset, Aboriginal people sought to have a voice in determining the future of their homelands. They resisted the unilateral assertion of Canadian sovereignty, negotiated Treaties, and took up arms when compelled. Canada’s responses were both military and diplomatic, and, as the Crown gained the balance of power in the West, it began to assume even greater control over the lives of Aboriginal people.
The Métis of Red River were among the first to openly resist Canadian colonization of the North-West. One of the outcomes of the fur trade was the development of long-term relationships between traders of European ancestry and Aboriginal women. Often referred to as marriages “in the custom of the country” or “country marriages,” these relationships gave literal and figurative birth to a new people with a distinct cultural identity. For voyageurs and fur traders, such marriages strengthened economic relations with the First Nations with whom they were trading. For Aboriginal groups, developing strong kinship ties was part of a larger and very old social and political system, but was also essential to trade, as these families raised their children to work in the trade as well. As the children of these relationships married and created their own unique cultures and communities, they were referred to by a variety of terms, including “mixed-blood,” “half-breed,” “country-born,” “bois-brûlé,” and, the term most commonly used today to describe this new nation, “Métis.”38
Settled communities of this emerging nation developed around the Great Lakes in the eighteenth century. Many moved west with the fur trade, congregating at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in present-day Winnipeg. There, the Métis developed an economy based on the cultivation of narrow riverfront lots and the twice-yearly buffalo hunt. Métis identity at Red River was shaped initially by their close relations with the North West Company and their opposition to the Selkirk Settlers, who settled at Red River in 1812 on land granted to them by the HBC. The Métis defended their rights to their land and their livelihood, culminating first in a confrontation with the settlers at Seven Oaks in 1816. They also adopted their own flag, and developed their own language, forms of government, clothing, music, and technologies. Over the next decades, they continued to assert their rights, defying the Hudson’s Bay Company’s claim to a trade monopoly. By 1849, their united action had destroyed the HBC’s trade monopoly.39
By 1870, the population of Red River exceeded 12,000. Almost half were French-speaking Métis, and 4,000 were English-speaking Métis. However, the government chose to ignore the Métis majority, paying attention solely to the small but growing population of immigrants from eastern Canada.40 The “Canadians,” as the immigrants were known, showed little regard for land rights of the First Nations or the Métis, and lobbied to have the land controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company transferred to Canada. Rupert’s Land had been granted to the HBC in 1670 by King Charles II of England. It was originally to have included all lands with waters draining into Hudson Bay that were not possessed by any British subjects or the subjects of any Christian state. By the later 1700s, a sometimes violent trade war existed between the Hudson’s Bay Company and competitors from Upper and Lower Canada. The trade war finally ended in an amalgamation of the Hudson’s Bay Company with its major competitor, the North West Company, in 1821. At that time, the British government gave the HBC a trade monopoly in all lands to the north and west of the United States and Upper and Lower Canada that did not belong to any European power. This added what was referred to as the “North-Western Territory” to the HBC’s existing claim to Rupert’s Land.41 After Confederation, negotiations between the Hudson’s Bay Company, Britain, and Canada led to an agreement to transfer all of the expanded Rupert’s Land to Canada for 300,000 pounds. The company was allowed to retain land around its posts (amounting to an estimated 20,234 hectares). The company was also granted rights to 20% of the land in the Plains and Parklands where settlement was expected to take place. Aboriginal people were not consulted in the negotiations that saw this land transferred to Canada. In 1869, before the transfer was finalized, the Canadian government dispatched surveyors and appointed an Ontarian, William McDougall, as governor. The Métis stopped the survey teams, refused to let McDougall into the territory, and, under the leadership of Louis Riel, proclaimed a provisional government that brought together both the English- and French-speaking factions in the settlement, except for the ‘Canadian party.’42
The provisional government did not accept the right of the federal government to govern Red River undemocratically as a territory of the federal government. It called upon the federal government to create a province, to be called “Assiniboia,” out of these territories. Though the federal government conceded this demand in the Manitoba Act of May 12, 1870, it insisted on controlling the land and natural resources of the new, initially postage-sized province, a control it did not exercise on the other provinces. But the new province would have an elected legislature, its own courts, and protection for French rights in the legislature and Catholic rights in education. The Métis were given the rights to their river-lot settlements. In addition, 566,560 hectares (1.4 million acres) were set aside for the children of Métis families.43
Although the negotiations had ended successfully for the Métis, the provisional government’s decision to execute one of its opponents, Thomas Scott, outraged public opinion in Ontario. In the spring of 1870, a military expedition was dispatched to Red River under the command of Lord Garnet Wolseley. During his lengthy career in the British army, Wolseley had served in Burma, the Crimea, India, China, Egypt, the Sudan, and South Africa. Although Wolseley referred to his expedition as a “peace mission,” the troops approached Fort Garry, the seat of Riel’s government, in battle formation. In the face of what was clearly a punitive mission, Riel fled.44
The distribution of the land promised to the Métis was complicated in subsequent years by government delay, repeated changes in policy, hostility towards the Métis by new settlers from Ontario, and the manipulations of land speculators and government officials. In the end, Métis people were able to retain little of the land that had been allocated to them.45 It is estimated that by 1885, over 80% of the Métis population had left Manitoba, heading further west.46
The Rupert’s Land Order of 1870, which transferred much of the North-West to Canadian control, required that “the claims of the Indian tribes to compensation for lands required for purposes of settlement will be considered and settled in conformity with the equitable principles which have uniformly governed the British Crown in its dealings with the aborigines.”47 In essence, this required the application of the principles of the 1763 Royal Proclamation in the Canadian North-West. Despite this obligation, the Treaty-making process often was driven by First Nations who were seeking to share in the benefits of the settlement of their land, retain their culture, and chart their future in a time of looming crisis.
In the 1870s, the First Nations of the Prairies and Parklands—the Saulteaux (Western Ojibway), Woodland Cree, Woodland Assiniboine, Dene, Assiniboine, Plains Cree, Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikuni (Peigan), and Stoney (Sioux)—were confronted with a complex set of challenges. The buffalo were in decline; fur prices were dropping; inter-tribal war and disease had disrupted First Nations communities; and newcomers, who often had little respect for them or their rights, were appearing in their midst.48 Drawing on their own history of alliance and diplomacy—exemplified by the Blackfoot Confederacy, and the military and diplomatic arrangements that had characterized relations among the Cree, the Assiniboine, and the Ojibway—the First Nations of the Plains and Parklands negotiated seven Treaties with the government of Canada in the 1870s.49 Through the Treaties, Aboriginal people sought a diplomatic relationship with Canada. Specifically, they were seeking assistance through a period of economic transition in the form of agricultural supplies and training as well as relief during periods of epidemic or famine. In addition, they wanted to curb the influence of American traders who were corrupting their people with whiskey and arming their enemies with rifles.50 They saw the Treaty process as establishing a reciprocal relationship that would be lasting: the beginning, in effect, of intergovernmental relations.51 The goal was to gain the skills that would allow them to continue to control their own destinies. As Ahtahkakoop (Star Blanket) said, “We Indians can learn the ways of living that made the white man strong.”52
Treaty negotiations often took place at First Nations’ insistence. Their negotiators succeeded several times in forcing the government to improve its offers. When federal officials adopted a ‘take it or leave it’ stance, there were First Nations leaders who, despite often desperate economic conditions, rejected the Treaties as not being in the best interests of their people.
The First Nations asserted that the land was theirs and insisted that the Canadian government had to negotiate with them before settlement proceeded.53 The First Nations of Manitoba, for example, were aware of the Treaties that had been negotiated with Native Americans at Pembina in 1851 and 1863. They expected to be treated no differently.54 Similarly, the Ojibway near Lake of the Woods told the government not to send settlers or surveyors until their relationship with the Canadian government had been determined.55 In Portage la Prairie, Aboriginal people posted a sign on a church door warning settlers not to move onto their lands without first making a Treaty.56 They halted telegraph construction and survey crews in what is now Saskatchewan. Further west, in what is now Alberta, they said that what they termed “the invasion” of their country had to be stopped until a Treaty was negotiated.57
From the Canadian perspective, the most significant elements in the Treaties—which have come to be known as the “Numbered Treaties”—were the written provisions by which the First Nations agreed to “cede, release, surrender, and yield” their land to the Crown.58 The provisions varied from Treaty to Treaty, but they generally included funds for hunting and fishing supplies, agricultural assistance, yearly payments for band members (annuities), a promise to pay for schools or teachers, and an amount of reserve lands based on the population of the band.59
The successful negotiation of the Treaties was essential to any assertion of Canadian sovereignty over the West. The federal government, at various times, was alerted by Indian Commissioner Wemyss Simpson, and by successive lieutenant-governors Adams Archibald and Alexander Morris, to the necessity of responding to First Nation requests to negotiate Treaties. Despite their worsening economic position, Aboriginal people remained a significant force. Morris warned Ottawa in 1873 that a pact among the Cree, Siksika, and Assiniboine could create a military force of 5,000. Even more worrying was the possibility that Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull) might bring about an alliance between the Hunkpapa Lakota and the Prairie First Nations.60 The only alternative to negotiating Treaties was to subdue the First Nations militarily, but that would have been a very costly proposition. In 1870, when the entire Canadian government budget was $19 million, the United States was spending more than that—$20 million a year—on its Indian Wars alone. Despite all these pressures, the government took a slow and piecemeal approach to Treaty making.61
The government policy was to assert its sovereignty over Aboriginal land, but to delay Treaty making until the land was actually needed for economic development. Treaties 1 (1871), 2 (1871), 3 (1873), 4 (1874), 6 (1876), and 7 (1877)—the Prairie Treaties—were signed to clear the way for the railway and open the West to immigration. The development of a commercial fishery on Lake Winnipeg and the expansion of a steamboat network along the Saskatchewan River created the need for Treaty 5 (1875). Later Treaties followed the same pattern. Treaty 8 (1899, with significant adhesions in 1900 and 1901) was negotiated to facilitate the exploitation of the Klondike gold fields. Treaties 9 (1905) and 10 (1906) and a significant set of adhesions to Treaty 5 (1908 to 1910) were responses to the growth of resource industries in northern Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Treaty 11 (1921) was in large measure prompted by the discovery of crude oil in the Northwest Territories.62
Not only did the government delay making Treaty until it was ready to exploit a region’s resources, but also its negotiators were told to keep the costs as low as possible. In preparation for Treaty 1, in 1871, Secretary of State Joseph Howe instructed Wemyss Simpson, who had been appointed to serve as Treaty commissioner, to “endeavor to secure the cession of the lands upon terms as favourable as possible to the Government, not going as far as the maximum sum hereafter named unless it be found impossible to obtain the object for a less amount.”63 Howe described the Robinson Treaties, signed in Ontario in the 1850s, as “good bargains” and recommended them as models.64 Those Treaties had included hunting, fishing, and marketing rights; an annual payment; and reserves.65 In keeping with the Robinson Treaties, the draft Treaty that federal officials sent the commissioners charged with negotiating Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 was limited to the establishment of reserves; a small, one-time cash payment; annuities; and a ban on the sale of alcohol.66 In 1877, David Laird, who had been appointed Treaty commissioner, was instructed to negotiate a Treaty that was “on terms most favourable to the Government.”67 There was little in the initial federal approach that would have provided First Nations with assistance in addressing the significant economic challenges they were facing, let alone provide them with anything close to just recompense for the benefits in lands and resources that the federal government expected to realize from the Treaties.
The federal negotiators benefited from and exploited
• the ceremonial tradition that had developed around fur-trade negotiations;
• their connection to the British Crown; and
• the support of missionaries who had been in contact with First Nations for several decades.68
Ceremony and the establishment of kinship ties had long been central to First Nations diplomacy and were incorporated into the fur trade. The annual meetings between the trader representing the fur-trade company and the trading chief for the First Nations fur brigade were highly ceremonial events, rooted in Aboriginal custom. Political and economic decisions were reached at these meetings that would govern both the immediate trade and the trading alliance for the coming year.69 The Treaty negotiations of the 1870s incorporated many elements of the types of ceremony used in fur-trade interactions: the government provided a suit of clothing to First Nations leaders, gifts were exchanged, and a pipe-smoking ceremony preceded discussion. First Nations’ teachings held that those who took part in the pipe ceremony were obliged to speak the truth—a stipulation that was not always, or clearly, understood by government negotiators.70 Processions, the smoking of pipes, the presentation of gifts (including medals commemorating the Treaties), and invocations of the Great Spirit all underscored the sacred nature of the agreements that were being undertaken.71
To negotiate the first Treaties, the government relied on the successive lieutenant-governors of Manitoba and the North-West Territories: Adams Archibald, Alexander Morris, and David Laird. As lieutenant-governors, they were Queen Victoria’s representatives in the West. In the talks, they often stressed their relationship to the Crown, and the Queen’s generous and benevolent intent.72 In negotiating the first two Treaties, Lieutenant-Governor Archibald used the language of relationship: the Queen was the “Great Mother” and the First Nations were “her red children.”73 Morris made use of the same imagery, saying that the ‘red’ and ‘white’ men must live as brothers.74 Constant allusions to the Queen as the mother created the impression that reciprocal bonds of kinship were being created. In Aboriginal terms, the kinship was one that engaged concern and support with a respect for the autonomy of the individual, while, to the Canadians, it was one in which the children would obey the parent.75
The government engaged missionaries in a variety of roles during the Treaty process. On occasion, they were sent out in advance to help lay the groundwork for negotiations,76 their mission buildings sometimes served as venues for Treaty talks,77 they spoke in favour of the Treaties, they served as translators and negotiators, and they acted as witnesses to the finalization of the agreements. Prominent in the process were Anglicans Charles Pratt, John McKay, and Abraham Cowley; the Methodist father-and-son team of George and John McDougall, along with fellow Methodists Egerton Young, J. H. Ruttan, and O. German; and the Roman Catholics Vital Grandin and Constantine Scollin.78
Leading Métis and mixed-ancestry figures played important roles in the negotiations, serving as interpreters and advisers to both the government and the First Nations.79 Two who acted as Treaty commissioners, William Joseph Christie and James McKay, had Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal family connections that extended throughout the North-West.80 The same can be said of the government interpreters, Peter Ballendine and Rev. John McKay.81 Peter Erasmus, also an interpreter, was another of mixed descent.82 (Individuals of mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry were often defined as “Indians” rather than “Métis” if they followed “the Indian mode of life”; that is, followed a harvesting lifestyle).83
There were always military or police escorts at the Treaty talks. Adams Archibald ensured that soldiers from the garrison at Red River were present at the talks that led to Treaty 1 in 1871. In his opinion, “Military display has always a great effect on savages, and the presence, even of a few troops, will have a good tendency.”84 In negotiating Treaty 3, Morris was accompanied by a company of troops from Lower Fort Garry, who prevented the sale of alcohol and provided what Morris called “a moral influence.”85 Members of the militia from Manitoba were present for the negotiation of Treaty 4,86 and there was a Mounted Police presence at Blackfoot Crossing for the negotiation of Treaty 7.87 Government negotiators made it clear that rejection was not an option. During the Treaty 1 talks, Archibald told First Nations leaders, “Whether they wished it or not, immigrants would come in and fill up the country.”88
According to William Parker, a Mounted Police officer who attended the Treaty 7 talks, Laird warned the First Nations representatives that efforts to block settlement would prove as futile as trying “to stop the running waters of the river, as the Queen’s soldiers were as thick as the grass on the prairies.”89
At the Treaty 1 talks, Archibald said that although the Queen thought it best for her “red children” to “adopt the habits of the whites,” she had “no idea of compelling you to do so. This she leaves to your choice, and you need not live like the white man unless you can be persuaded to do so of your own free will.”90 This promise was at odds with the laws of the time, which limited First Nations participation in all aspects of Canadian society unless they went through the process of enfranchisement—which did require them to “live like the white man.” In coming years, First Nations people would be compelled to send their children to residential schools, where those children would also be made to “live like the white man.”
Morris also stressed the permanent nature of the government commitments, saying, “What I offer you is to be while the water flows and the sun rises.”91 In 1876, Morris told the Cree, “What I trust and hope we will do is not for to-day and tomorrow only; what I will promise, and what I believe and hope you will take, is to last as long as the sun shines and yonder river flows.”92 This concept of an agreement that lasts as long as the sun shines and the water flows was symbolized in the Treaty medals that were distributed at the signing of Treaty 3 through to Treaty 8. They showed a chief and an imperial officer shaking hands; a hatchet was buried in the ground and, in the background, the sun shone.93
The First Nations negotiators demanded fair treatment. During the Treaty 3 talks, Chief Ma-we-do-pe-nais reminded Morris, “The white man has robbed us of our riches, and we don’t wish to give them up again without getting something in their place.”94 He said he could hear the sound of gold rustling beneath the land that Treaty commissioners sought.95 First Nations people were unwilling to accept that the Hudson’s Bay Company had had any right to transfer their land to Canada. During the negotiation of Treaty 4, Pis Qua of the Plains Saulteaux confronted a Hudson’s Bay Company official, telling him, “You told me you had sold our land for so much money, £300,000. We want that money.”96 When offered 640 acres (259 hectares) per family in 1874, Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker) responded, “This is our land! It isn’t a piece of pemmican to be cut off and given in little pieces back to us. It is ours and we will take what we want.”97 Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) famously said that for First Nations people, post-Treaty life would be like having “the rope to be about my neck,” the life of a tethered animal.98
From the outset, the First Nations negotiators took strong positions that reflected their understanding of the value of their land. During the Treaty 1 talks, for example, the government officials complained that the First Nations were asking for two-thirds of Manitoba (which was then much smaller than its current size).99 What government officials described as “extravagant demands” were First Nation proposals for the provisions they believed were needed to ease their passage into a new economy. These included accommodation, land, education, medical care, livestock, teachers and instructors, transportation, clothing, and, when necessary, support in times of need.100
To gain First Nations agreement, federal officials did not always provide full explanations of the Treaties and their implications, and they did not always include in the written Treaty all the commitments made during negotiations. Verbal promises to provide clothing to the chief and councillors, and agricultural tools and support to offset the loss of access to other means of making a living, were not originally included in the written texts of Treaty 1 and Treaty 2. It was only on First Nations’ insistence that these so-called outside promises were added to the written agreement in 1875.101 On other occasions, First Nations negotiators succeeded in pushing government representatives—to the irritation of officials in Ottawa—to go beyond their mandate. Treaty 3, for example, provided for larger reserves than did Treaty 1 and Treaty 2, and more substantial annuities, livestock, and money for hunting supplies; Treaty 5 covered more territory than had been originally authorized; Treaty 6 included a commitment for relief in times of famine and the provision of a medicine chest; and Treaty 7 contained a new livestock provision.102
In negotiating Treaty 6, Morris made it clear that the Treaty created obligations that went beyond the specifics of the agreement. He pointed out that in the previous winter, the government had provided relief to Indians whose crops had been destroyed by grasshoppers. “We cannot foresee these things, and all I can promise is that you will be treated kindly, and in that extraordinary circumstances you must trust to the generosity of the Queen.”103 The First Nations also were assured they would be allowed to continue their previous use of resources. In particular, they were given assurances that they would be able to travel over the land and hunt as they had in the past.104 Morris also told the chiefs they would play a role in selecting lands for reserves.105
There was a great deal of importance that was not said. There is no evidence, for example, that the entire text of Treaty 7 was even read out to the First Nations, let alone in the languages of the Aboriginal people present. First Nations accounts, handed down from generation to generation, have described the Treaty as a Peace Treaty, under which the First Nations agreed to share land with settlers in exchange for economic support.106 In an oral history of Treaty 7, which stressed the poor quality of the translation provided, Tom Yellowhorn recounted the Peigan understanding of the agreement as being one in which people “thought they were getting money but that they still owned the land.”107 There is no evidence that the negotiators described the federal government’s policy of assimilation through enfranchisement or the restrictions placed on First Nations people through such legislation as the Indian Act.
Each Treaty contained education provisions. Under Treaty 1, “Her Majesty agrees to maintain a school on each reserve hereby made whenever the Indians of the reserve should desire it.” In Treaty 2, the nearly identical commitment is “to maintain a school in each reserve hereby made, whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” In Treaty 3, the commitment is “to maintain schools for instruction in such reserves hereby made as to Her Government of Her Dominion of Canada may seem advisable whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” In Treaty 4, it is “to maintain a school in the reserve allotted to each band as soon as they settle on said reserve and are prepared for a teacher.” In Treaty 5 and Treaty 6, the commitment is “to maintain schools for instruction in such reserves hereby made as to Her Government of the Dominion of Canada may seem advisable, whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” The Treaty 7 commitment is “to pay the salary of such teachers to instruct the children of said Indians as to her Government of Canada may seem advisable, when said Indians are settled on their reserve and shall desire teachers.” (With slight variation, this commitment was used in the last four numbered Treaties, which were negotiated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.)108
There is no evidence that the government initially intended to include schools in the Treaties. The original draft for Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 contained no education provisions. The correspondence between Indian Affairs Minister Alexander Campbell and Treaty Commissioner Morris, in preparation for the negotiation of Treaty 3, dealt only with annuities and the initial cash payment.109 Two weeks before Treaty 3 talks started, Morris telegraphed Ottawa, asking, “Presume reserves to be granted to Indians but have no instruction—What about support of Schools? Indians generally anxious to learn, on this subject, I believe it to be good policy to promote education of children especially if limited annuities be adopted.”110 It was Chief Ka-Katche-way of the Lac Seul band who, in the negotiation of Treaty 3, initially raised the demand for a schoolmaster “to teach their children the knowledge of the white man.”111 During the Treaty 4 talks, Morris said, “Whenever you go to a Reserve, the Queen will be ready to give you a school and a schoolmaster.”112 During the Treaty 6 negotiations, the Cree twice included a request for schoolteachers in lists of proposed changes to the government offer.113 In 1880, Morris described the promise of schools as an important element of the Treaties that was
deserving of being pressed with the utmost energy. The new generation can be trained in the habits and ways of civilized life—prepared to encounter the difficulties with which they will be surrounded, by the influx of settlers, and fitted for maintaining themselves as tillers of the soil. The erection of a school-house on a reserve will be attended with slight expense, and the Indians would often give their labour towards its construction.114
By signing Treaties, First Nations strove to address their immediate concerns and establish the foundation of their nation-to-nation relationship with the Canadian state. They had secured their rights prior to the arrival of large numbers of settlers; their economic independence was guaranteed through provisions that allowed them to hunt, trap, and fish; they would receive support while making a transition to farming; and their children would gain access to formal schooling. The Treaties had created a sacred relationship in which both parties had ongoing obligations.115 In coming years, it would become apparent that Canada’s understanding, and implementation, of its Treaty obligations was far more constrained.
The test of Canada’s willingness to fulfill its Treaty obligations was not long in coming. The crisis caused by the rapid collapse of the North American buffalo population in the late 1870s forced First Nations living in the southern “settlement belt” to turn to the federal government for support. The government was completely unprepared, and largely unwilling to fulfill its obligations.116 The near extinction of the buffalo was the result of a complex set of changes: the expansion of the Métis buffalo hunt during the mid-nineteenth century, the introduction of repeating rifles to the hunt, the role of American sport hunters, and the increasing demand for buffalo hides by eastern industries. The movement of the us trade in buffalo robes and hides into the West after the end of the American Civil War marked a dramatic transformation in the process, as the hunt became a slaughter.117 Another factor in the decline of buffalo populations was the attempt by the us military to stop the movement of the herds into Canada. This policy was intended to deprive Chief Sitting Bull’s Dakota, who had taken refuge in Canada after the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1877, of a food source.118
Many First Nations people devoted considerable effort to farming during this period. Their attempts to establish independent farming communities were frustrated by the poor quality of the lands they had been forced onto, inadequate implements, inferior seed and livestock, as well as early frosts and insect infestation. Often, the federal government simply refused to supply promised farm implements. Indian Commissioner Joseph Provencher ‘justified’ this refusal in 1877 with these words:
It has been the constant practice of the Indians to say that they were ready to receive every article, cattle, implements, that they may be entitled to, in certain conditions, according to the Treaties. But I would strongly recommend that no such engagements should be fulfilled before the Indians have really showed that whatever article is given to them shall not be wasted or traded.119
Successful farming on the Prairies was not an easy or certain endeavour for anyone. Many European settlers, who were more familiar with contemporary agricultural techniques, struggled and often failed to be successful. Several decades of experimentation were needed to develop the crops, implements, and technologies that would be suitable to the Prairies.120 It has been estimated that almost four in ten prairie homesteaders were forced to abandon their farms in the period from 1870 to 1931.121
There were only a handful of Indian agents and farm instructors appointed to assist tens of thousands of First Nations people in making the transition to an agricultural way of life.122 Many of the farm instructors were political appointees with little knowledge of farming, Aboriginal people, or western agricultural conditions. Some of them were not above trying to use the position to enrich themselves when issuing supply contracts. Others came to view Aboriginal farmers with hostility, confusing the payment of federal Treaty obligations with undeserved charity. They did not recognize the different circumstances faced by First Nations people who were prohibited from staking homesteads as they had been allowed to do. In addition, Aboriginal people were often restricted to less land than settlers had; they could not take out loans against their land, and often had trouble convincing merchants to extend them credit. As well, they needed the permission of the Indian agent to sell or barter their animals and produce.123 Many Aboriginal people were forced back into hunting because they were not being provided with enough support to farm.124
When the hunt failed, they had to turn to the government for relief. The cost of that assistance was over half a million dollars in 1882. While John A. Macdonald defended the expense, saying it was cheaper to feed the First Nations people than to fight them, the reality was that in the 1880s, the threat of starvation became an instrument of government policy.125 In 1883, the federal government reduced the Indian Affairs budget, leading to a reduction in relief payments.126 Not satisfied with the level of control that threats of starvation gave him, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney attempted to implement a policy of what he called “sheer compulsion,” using the Mounted Police to arrest First Nations leaders and disrupt Aboriginal government.127 By 1884, North-West Mounted Police Superintendent L. N. F. Crozier complained to Ottawa that the government’s cut in rations seemed to be designed to discover just how little food a man needed to be able to work and subsist. If the government did not feed the people with whom it had made Treaty, he warned, it would soon have to fight them.128 All these pressures led to a number of near-violent confrontations between First Nations people and government representatives.129 The impact of famine and disease was devastating. According to one contemporary estimate, between 1880 and 1885, the First Nations population on the Prairies dropped by more than a third—from 32,000 to 20,000.130
The First Nations leadership organized a diplomatic response to the growing crisis. In 1881, for example, they brought their concerns before Governor General Lord Lorne, who was visiting western Canada, reminding him of the Treaty commitments to provide assistance in times of need.131 Under the leadership of chiefs Piapot, Little Pine, and Mistahimaskwa, the Cree sought to establish a Cree homeland in the Cypress Hills. By selecting reserves in nearby locations, they would retain political autonomy and control over resources. However, Commissioner Dewdney wished to see them settled on smaller, separate, and more easily controlled reserves. Although the Treaties allowed Piapot and Little Pine to select their Treaty land, Dewdney would not grant them the land they asked for in the Cypress Hills. He also refused to provide them with food, going so far as to withdraw the Mounted Police, the traditional distributor of food rations, from Fort Walsh in 1883. The First Nations were forced to travel north, settling on reserves that were more acceptable to Ottawa. By 1884, Mistahimaskwa, whose people were on the edge of starvation, signed the Treaty and took a reserve near Battleford, while Piapot settled in the Qu’Appelle Valley. That same year, the leadership of several bands met at Duck Lake, where they compiled a list of eighteen grievances relating to the implementation of the Treaties.132 At this meeting, they spoke of how many of the younger men found the treatment they had received at the hands of government too hard to bear after the “‘sweet promises’ made in order to get their country from them.”133 Aboriginal leaders felt bound by the Treaties, which had been signed in solemn spiritual ceremonies.134 The leaders decided against military action, and agreed to meet in a year’s time to determine the next steps in their diplomatic campaign.135 These plans were cut short by the tragic events of 1885, when the federal government’s failure to address Métis land rights precipitated an armed rebellion.
In the years following the Red River Resistance in 1870, many Métis moved further and further west, creating communities in places such as Batoche, St. Laurent, and Prince Albert. As settlers from eastern Canada began to move into the North-West Territories, the Métis felt threatened and sought to have the federal government recognize their land rights. The start of construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s made it clear that Canada would be opening the West to a much larger wave of settlement, making the land rights question even more important to the Métis. In 1884, they invited Louis Riel, who was then teaching in a Catholic boarding school for Métis students in Montana, to return to the North-West.136 Riel lobbied the government to take action on the land issue while he also sought, without success, to establish an alliance with First Nations leaders.
In March 1885, the Métis established a provisional government under Riel’s leadership. Within days, they won a quick victory over Canadian government forces at Duck Lake. Mistahimaskwa tried to keep his people out of the conflict, but after the Métis victory at Duck Lake, a confrontation arose at Frog Lake between a group of young men from his band and the Hudson’s Bay clerk and the Indian agent. With Mistahimaskwa unable to intervene effectively, nine settlers had been killed.137 During this same period, the Cree in the Battleford area travelled there to request relief rations and express their loyalty. The sight of a large number of First Nations people under the leadership of Pitikwahanapiwiyin panicked the townspeople, who fled to the North-West Mounted Police barracks. The Cree took what supplies they could from the stores and houses, and then returned to their reserve.138
In eastern Canada, these events were portrayed as a joint Métis and First Nations uprising. Making use of the partially completed Canadian Pacific Railway, the Canadian government rapidly transported west 8,000 men under the command of Major General Frederick Middleton. A Belfast-born veteran of the British army, Middleton had previously participated in the suppression of Indigenous rebellions in India and New Zealand.139
Although Pitikwahanapiwiyin and his people had already withdrawn from Battleford, one of the campaign’s first engagements was to send a military column to relieve the troops at Battleford. They attacked the Cree at a camp at Cut Knife Hill. The Cree successfully defended their position. Because Pitikwahanapiwiyin gave instructions not to fire on the retreating Canadian troops, Middleton’s losses were limited.140
The short-lived rebellion came to an end in May, when Middleton’s forces defeated the Métis at Batoche. Riel was arrested, convicted of treason, and executed. His military commander, Gabriel Dumont, sought refuge in the United States. Mistahimaskwa, who had attempted to limit the conflict, successfully eluded the Canadian military until June, when he surrendered.141
The First Nations involvement in the North-West Rebellion was limited in large measure to the acts of individual people driven to the edge of desperation by harsh and punitive government policy. Riel’s efforts to recruit First Nations support to the rebellions had been almost completely unsuccessful, since the leaders considered themselves bound by sacred Treaty commitments. In addition, they knew of the risks involved in open revolt.142 The government was well aware of these facts. However, it chose to portray the First Nations as “rebels.” While privately acknowledging that the Cree actions were the result of hunger and desperation (the product of harsh government policy), and not part of Riel’s rebellion, Dewdney, who had previously supported a policy of “sheer compulsion” in dealing with First Nations, publicly proclaimed them to be rebels in league with the Métis. In private correspondence, Prime Minister Macdonald noted that the prospect of an Indian war had been intentionally allowed to “assume large proportions in the public eye. This has been done however for our own purposes, and I think wisely done.”143 The federal purposes were simple: the First Nations leaders were portrayed as traitors in order to justify a suppression of First Nations governments. With this knowledge, and in order to more effectively suppress their leadership, the federal government chose to treat the First Nations’ actions as treason. Over eighty First Nations people were put on trial for their activities in the spring of 1885. The translation at the trials was usually inadequate or non-existent, the cases were often circumstantial, and the sentences were excessively punitive.144 Even though Dewdney was aware that there was little evidence to link Pitikwahanapiwiyin and Mistahimaskwa to the rebellion, he expressed satisfaction at their conviction on charges of treason-felony.145 In 1885, a court in Battleford convicted eleven First Nations men of murder; three had their death sentences commuted, and the other eight were executed on November 27, 1885. Macdonald believed the public executions would “convince the Red Man that the White man governs.”146 To press home the message, Dewdney arranged to have First Nations people present at the hangings. The witnesses kept the memory of the event alive, speaking of the courage displayed on the gallows and the anger the community felt over the government refusal to release the bodies for a traditional burial.147
In the wake of 1885, there was no more talk of letting First Nations people choose whether they wished to live like white people. They were to be assimilated, and if they chose not to be assimilated, their children would be taken from them and assimilated. In 1887, John A. Macdonald expressed the government position bluntly, stating that the “great aim of our legislation … has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion, as speedily as they are fit for the change.”148 He was expressing a view shared by leading Indian Affairs officials. One of the most revealing insights into the colonial mind at work on the Canadian Prairies was the extraordinary set of recommendations that Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed prepared in July 1885, just months after the quashing of the North-West Rebellion. Starting from a position that those who had not participated in the rebellion should experience no change in treatment, he proceeded to advocate the implementation of a set of highly repressive actions, calling on the government to adopt the following measures.
• Ensure that those who were convicted were treated as severely as the law would allow.
• Abolish the “tribal system.” He argued that those bands he viewed as disloyal had nullified their Treaties. Their chiefs and councils should be dismissed—and not replaced. Instead, Indian Affairs officials would deal directly with individual First Nations people.
• Refuse to pay annuities to bands he considered disloyal or to persons who had participated in the rebellion.
• Disarm all rebels. Those who needed guns for hunting were to be lent shotguns (not rifles).
• Require rebels to obtain a pass from an Indian Department official before they left the reserve.
• Hang the leaders of the “Teton Sioux” and send the rest to the United States.
• Break up Mistahimaskwa’s band and scatter its members to other bands, or send them to a reserve near Onion Lake.
• Enforce the merger of bands deemed to be filled with “bad and lazy Indians” with bands that were thought to be more loyal.
• Remove “all half-breeds” from annuity pay sheets if they belonged to “rebel bands,” even if they had not participated in the rebellion.
• Confiscate and sell the horses and cattle of “rebel Indians,” and use the proceeds to purchase livestock, forcing them to pursue agriculture on reserves.
• Provide special recognition for those who did not participate in the rebellion.
In addition, Indian agents should ensure that “each and every Indian”—not just the rebels—“now works for every pound of provision given to him.”149
Many of Reed’s recommendations were implemented. People were struck off the annuity list, guns and horses were confiscated, bands were broken up and dispersed, and a work test was applied before rations would be supplied to the able-bodied. Macdonald, who reviewed Reed’s suggestions, was particularly taken by the recommendation for a pass system, commenting, “The system should be introduced in the loyal bands as well & the advantage of the changes pressed upon them.” Recognizing, however, that this violated the Treaties, Macdonald noted that punishments for those who violated the pass system “should not be insisted on.”150 In August 1885, Reed introduced the pass system, apparently without government authorization, informing Dewdney:
I am adopting the system of keeping the Indians on their respective Reserves and not allowing any [to] leave them without passes—I know this is hardly supportable by any legal enactment but we must do many things which can only be supported by common sense and by what may be for the general good. I get the police to send out daily and send any Indians without passes back to their reserves.151
The following year, Reed, still without any legislative authority, issued pass books to Indian agents. The fact that the pass system was to apply to all First Nations people on reserves is apparent from Reed’s instruction to agents that, when issuing a pass, they indicate whether the recipient had been disloyal in 1885.152 While the administration of the pass system varied from place to place and time to time, it was used, without any basis in law, to monitor, control, and limit the activities of Aboriginal people.153
In an 1889 report, Reed, by then Indian commissioner, described his policy as one of “destroying the tribal or communist system,” replacing it with “a spirit of individual responsibility.” In other words, he was extending to all First Nations the treatment he had recommended for rebels. Enforced cultural change, leading to enfranchisement, remained the goal.
If the Indian is to become a source of profit to the country it is clear that he must be amalgamated with the white population. Before this can be done he must not only be trained to some occupation, the pursuit of which will enable him to support himself, but he must be imbued with the white man’s spirit and impregnated by his ideas. The end in view in the policy adopted for the treatment of our wards is to lead them, step by step, to provide for their own requirements, through their industry, and while doing so, to inculcate a spirit of self-reliance and independence which will fit them for enfranchisement, and the enjoyment of all the privileges, as well as the responsibilities of citizenship.154
The destruction of the ‘tribal system’ had implications for First Nations agriculture. The government was suspicious of all co-operative and community measures, including the community ownership of farm technology and livestock. Reed believed that First Nations people would develop the ability to continue to support themselves by their own means once, in the not-too-distant future, they were all enfranchised, if they practised peasant agriculture that did not depend on technology. Indian agents first allocated First Nations farmers forty-acre (sixteen-hectare) lots and scattered the lots throughout the reserve to discourage the development of community cohesion. Even when the practice of subdivision was ended in the early 1890s, Aboriginal settlers were restricted to farming only on the already subdivided parts of the reserve.155 The requirement that First Nations people receive the Indian agent’s approval to sell their produce off-reserve was a demeaning restriction that hindered economic development. Put in place in the 1880s, it was still operative in the 1920s, when, according to Eleanor Brass, the agent on the File Hill reserve “handled all the finances of the reserve and we couldn’t sell a bushel of grain, a cow or a horse without getting a permit first.”156 Edward Ahenakew recalled in his memoirs how a First Nations farmer might have to spend a day or two, which he might otherwise be using to farm, in hunting down the Indian agent on another reserve in order to receive permission to sell a load of hay to feed his family, a frustrating and humiliating process.157
Although colonization in much of Canada was based on the signing of Treaties with First Nations, it followed a different path on Canada’s west coast. There, First Nations and Europeans entered into a maritime fur trade in the late eighteenth century. Coastal nations traded with ocean-going Europeans and Americans. Throughout this period of maritime trade, interactions tended to be brief and transitory, and First Nations people retained control over their culture, their economy, and their lands.158 In the early nineteenth century, land-based trading posts were created on the coast and in the British Columbia interior by several different companies. After the amalgamation of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821, the HBC’s operations on the west coast were systematized, and the company established a chain of trading posts along the Pacific coast.159 In 1849, the British government granted the Hudson’s Bay Company the right to govern Vancouver Island as a British colony.160
The British claim to the Pacific Northwest dates back to Captain James Cook’s exploration of its coast in 1778.161 From 1851 to 1864, the colony was governed by Hudson’s Bay Company official James Douglas. When, in the wake of discovery of gold in the Fraser Canyon, in 1858, the British government proclaimed the mainland of British Columbia to be a separate colony, Douglas became governor of both colonies. Only at that point was he obliged to resign his position with the HBC.162
The British government did not attempt to implement on the west coast the principles that underlay the Royal Proclamation. On Vancouver Island, Douglas did negotiate a number of Treaties that provided First Nations with limited reserves and benefits. The Treaties did not involve the vast expanses of land covered by the Prairie Treaties. Instead, they were limited to the land required for immediate settlement.163 Douglas was not able to continue with his Treaty-making policy. The British government was no longer prepared to pay the costs involved in fulfilling Treaty obligations, and the newly established colonial assembly refused to raise the money. As a result, First Nations people in British Columbia after 1859 were not compensated for their lands, and no additional Treaties were negotiated with them. (The one exception to this is the portion of northeastern British Columbia that was covered by Treaty 8 in 1899.)164 Much to the frustration of settlers, Douglas’s policy was not only to establish reserves, but also to make the reserves as large as the First Nations requested. He also took steps to protect the reserves that had been set out from settler encroachment.
When Douglas retired in 1864, he was succeeded by veteran British Colonial Office officials who took a far less protective approach to First Nations land rights. Joseph Trutch, the commissioner of lands for British Columbia, instituted a policy under which the size of reserves was dramatically reduced. New reserves were provided on the basis of ten acres (4.05 hectares) per family (while 160 acres, or 64.7 hectares, per family was commonly, but not always, used to establish reserves in the Numbered Treaties).165
The two colonies were merged into a single colony, known as “British Columbia,” in 1866, and, in 1871, it was admitted into Confederation. The terms of union in that agreement stipulated that in its dealing with the First Nations of British Columbia, Canada would be as ‘liberal’ as the government of British Columbia had been. This was no small irony, since Canadian policy, although it had never been generous, was far more liberal than that which had been pursued by the government of colonial British Columbia.166 For example, the British Columbia policy was so aggressive that it nearly provoked hostilities with the First Nations of the Kootenays in 1877. In these conflicts, the federal government was unable to protect First Nations’ interests effectively, even though it was well aware of the validity of First Nations’ claims.167
Restrictions were also placed on Aboriginal spiritual practices during this period. Ceremonies such as the Potlatch in British Columbia and the Thirst Dance (usually called the “Sun Dance” by government officials) on the Prairies played an important role in the lives of Aboriginal people. Such ceremonies served to redistribute surplus, demonstrate status, cement and renew alliances, mark important events such as marriages or the assumption of position, and strengthen the bond with spiritual forces.
Missionaries attacked them as ‘pagan rites,’ and government officials objected to the fact that they undermined the accumulation of private property, took people away from agricultural pursuits, brought together bands they were trying to keep separate, and strengthened the status of traditional leaders and Elders.168 Those missionaries involved in residential schooling played a central role in lobbying for the suppression of the Potlatch and the Sun Dance, arguing that the ceremonies undid much of the work that had been accomplished in the schools. The Reverend Albert H. Hall at Alert Bay in 1896 framed the debate with the succinct “It is school versus potlatch.”169 To Archdeacon J. W. Tims, who ran an Anglican boarding school in Alberta, the Sun Dance was “that great heathen festival.” On his first encounter of it, he recalled, “If I ever felt the hopelessness of a task set me to do it was then.”170 An 1884 amendment to the Indian Act first banned the Potlatch, and Prairie “give-away dances,” as they were often termed by government officials, were banned in 1895.
Government officials were instructed to prosecute only as a last resort. But they often came under pressure from missionaries to take action. In 1897, five people were arrested at the Thunderchild Reserve in what is now Saskatchewan for holding a give-away dance. Three were sentenced to two months in jail. The commander of the Mounted Police at Battleford thought the jail terms too harsh and worked to secure early releases for the men, who were all elderly. In 1897, the Blackfoot agreed to shorten the number of days devoted to the ceremonies and to not include some of the practices, such as ritual piercing, that were specifically banned by legislation. Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget, however, would not abandon the department’s requirement that the tongues of slaughtered cattle be either removed or split, making them unavailable for consumption at the ceremonies, which he viewed as being immoral and heathen.171
From the 1880s onward, the federal government acted decisively to jail First Nations leaders, disarm them, control their movements, limit the authority of their governments, ban their spiritual practices, and control their economic activities. It also chose to intervene decisively in family life through the establishment of residential schools. It was in 1883, the same year that the government cut rations on the Prairies, that the first of a series of residential industrial schools opened its doors, operated by a government-and-church partnership. Those schools, modelled on schools for delinquent and criminal youth, represented a betrayal rather than a fulfillment of the Treaty promises to provide on-reserve education. Their story is the darkest, longest, and most chilling chapter in the history of the colonization of Aboriginal peoples. The federal government’s determination to have as cheap an Indian policy as possible, coupled with the church’s drive to enrol and convert as many children as possible, meant that the schools were sites of hunger, overwork, danger and disease, limited education, and, in tens of thousands of cases, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and neglect.