CHAPTER 12

PLACED ON A
LITTLE SPOT
[O]ur families are well, our people have plenty of food, but how long this will last we
know not. We see your ships, and hear things that make our hearts grow faint. They say
that more King-George-men [settlers] will soon be here, and will take our land, our fire-
wood, our fishing grounds; that we shall be placed on a little spot, and shall have to do
everything according to the fancies of the King-George-men.… We do not wish to sell our
land nor our water; let your friends stay in their own country.
—An anonymous Sechelt chief speaking to Gilbert Sproat, Port Alberni,
August 1860

B
eyond the Rocky Mountains, the years between 1821 and
the early 1870s were ones of accelerating change and dan-
gerous disputes. First the sea otters all but disappeared, forc-
ing the fur trade to move inland. The race between Americans and the Hudson’s
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Bay Company to settle the Pacific Northwest began in 1821 and lasted until 1846.
The Americans won easily. As a result, Great Britain and the United States con-
cluded the Oregon Boundary Treaty in 1846, which gave the Americans control of
the Native territory south of the 49th parallel. To establish a stronger British pres-
ence in the remainder of the area and to ward off any further Yankee expansion, the
Colonial Office gave the HBC the go-ahead to establish an agricultural colony on
southern Vancouver Island and to develop resources elsewhere on the island. The
colony had barely established itself when a sequence of gold rushes began in the
coastal region. These various developments signalled the beginning of a new eco-
nomic order in the West that would present new opportunities to Native people; it
would also threaten their future and security as the newcomers began to expropri-
ate Native lands and resources.

178
Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 179
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

An engraving of Saveeah, chief of the Kootcha-Kootchin, one of the northwesternmost Dene groups,1847–48.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 180 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

HEREDITARY LEADERS AND THE HBC

When Governor Simpson curtailed beaver exploitation in Rupert’s Land during the
1820s and 1830s for conservation purposes, he tried to compensate by expanding
operations in other districts, including New Caledonia, the former North West
Company fur-trading area to the west of the Rocky Mountains. This proved to be a
very difficult and costly effort. The declining stocks of sea otter had encouraged
coastal nations, particularly the Tsimshian of the lower Skeena River, to make a
major effort to expand their inland trading networks. The HBC officers found
themselves battling head to head with these experienced traders.
HBC trader William Brown’s account of his time in New Caledonia gives us a
clear picture of this conflict in the territories of the Babine, Gitxsan, and
Wet’suwet’en during the 1820s. The company dispatched Brown to Babine Lake,
where he established Fort Kilmaurs (also known as Old Fort Babine) in 1822. He
intended to use this post as a base to extend the company’s sphere of operations
northwestward. Brown found himself in a very unfamiliar world. Because he had
spent his earlier career in various districts to the east of the Rocky Mountains, he
was unaccustomed to dealing with hereditary leaders who exerted considerable
control over the use of resources on their lands and who dominated inter-nation
trading relations.
A succession of coast Tsimshian chiefs bearing the hereditary name Legiac
led the Native opposition to the HBC. When Brown arrived on the scene, these
people were in the process of strengthening their ties with the Gitxsan and
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Wet’suwet’en. The Tsimshian already held regular trading fairs at the forks of the
Skeena and Bulkley rivers, and some Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en undertook frequent
expeditions to the coast. Brown learned that he would have great difficulty break-
ing into this exchange network because the Tsimshian, who had access to trading
ships plying the coast, were able to provide goods at much cheaper rates than he
could. To address this problem, Brown resorted to an old Nor’ Wester strategy. He
instructed the company to import moose hides from districts lying to the east of the
Rocky Mountains. The Babine, Gitxsan, and Wet’suwet’en were willing to pay pre-
mium prices for the scarce commodity, which they presented as gifts to guests at
funeral feasts. The trade in moose skins remained a feature of the company’s busi-
ness in Skeena country until the turn of this century, when provincial conservation
legislation unfortunately banned the traffic in game-animal hides.
The Babine tossed other obstacles in Brown’s way. Like most of the nations

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 181

living on the Pacific slope, the Babine were experienced fish sellers. They knew
Brown would have to depend on them for fresh and dried salmon because game
was not abundant in their country—or in most areas of New Caledonia, for that
matter. Soon after his arrival, the Babine informed him that they would determine
the price he would have to pay for salmon and for any fishing nets that he required.
Brown had no choice but to pay their high prices.
In light of the company’s conservation policies elsewhere at this time, it is
ironic that the resource-management methods of the Babine, Gitxsan, and
Wet’suwet’en proved to be the biggest barrier to increasing the trade in beavers
from the upper Skeena country. Brown quickly discovered that each chief permitted
an annual harvest of only about twenty-five beavers from his house territory. These
leaders, whom Brown referred to as “men of property,” or “nobles,” limited the har-
vest partly by denying most of their followers the right to hunt beavers. As well,
they jealously guarded their domain against the incursions of outsiders. When
Governor Simpson visited the district, he reported that the chiefs regarded any
trespass on their houses’ lands as being tantamount to a declaration of war. In 1826
Brown tried to get the Babine to agree to abandon their limits on the hunt at a
meeting of the men of property he called at Fort Kilmaurs. After having learned that
the various Carrier nations, which included the Babine and Wet’suwet’en, hus-
banded the beaver because they prized the animal’s flesh as a ceremonial food,
Brown proposed that the chiefs permit all their male followers to trap beavers, pro-
vided that these men gave the meat to the first leader who sponsored a funeral feast
in any given year. The house leaders who had accepted Brown’s invitation listened
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

politely to his proposal but rejected it.

The elders also refused to give commercial trapping activities any priority, in
spite of Brown’s repeated call for them to do so. Instead, the Babine and
Wet’suwet’en spent most of the long winter months doing what they liked best—
feasting, gambling, and socializing. Furthermore, the chiefs, who handled most of
the trade of their followers, refused to break their well-established trading connec-
tions with other nations. The best that Brown could do was persuade them to divide
their loyalties. In this way he obtained a small share of the regional fur trade while
the coastal Tsimshian held on to the largest part.
Unable to outwit its coast Tsimshian opponents, the HBC decided to try a
new tactic. In 1831 it established the first Fort Simpson on the coast between the
Nass and Skeena rivers (later relocating it to the Skeena River) so the company
could become the Tsimshian’s primary supplier. This was part of an overall strategy

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 182 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

to establish a strong presence on the coast, which began in 1827 with the con-
struction of Fort Langley on the lower Fraser River. In 1833 it built Fort McLaughlin
on Milbanke Sound, near Bella Bella. Operating posts at these strategic locations
enabled the HBC to outfit most of the key mainland coastal groups. To enhance its
position even further, the company eliminated Russian competition from the north
by negotiating an arrangement with the Russian American Fur Company in 1839. In
it the HBC obtained exclusive trading rights in the Alaska Panhandle for an annual
payment of river-otter skins; in the 1840s the payment for this concession amounted
to an impressive fifty thousand pelts. As it had hoped, the company profited
indirectly from the traffic into and out of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en territories
through Tsimshian middlemen at Fort Simpson.

NEW ZEALAND-STYLE LAND SURRENDERS ON

VANCOUVER ISLAND
At the same time that the British Colonial Office was searching for someone to
develop a settlement on the West Coast to act as a buffer against American
encroachment, the HBC was interested in Vancouver Island for its agricultural and
mineral potential—particularly coal. The Native people had shown company
officers deposits at various locations on the island. In 1849 the Colonial Office
accepted the HBC’s proposal to establish a colony on Vancouver Island.
The settlement at Fort Victoria got off to a very shaky start because the Colonial
Office chose Richard Blanshard as its first governor. He was an English lawyer who
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

knew nothing about the region or its people. The manner in which Blanshard dealt
with one group in 1850 was reminiscent of the practices of the early maritime fur
traders. That year three HBC men had deserted ship in the territory of the Newitty (a
Kwakwaka’wakw group) and had been murdered by some unknown assailants. The
Newitty claimed that the killers belonged to a northern group, perhaps the Kitkatla or
Haida, but a neighbouring and hostile Kwakwaka’wakw group living next to Fort
Rupert blamed the Newitty. The magistrate at the fort was baffled. The new governor,
however, resolved to take decisive action, fearing that Fort Rupert would be attacked
by the surrounding well-armed Kwakwaka’wakw.
The purported wrongdoers would pay for their crimes to safeguard against any
“sudden outburst of fury to which all savages are liable.” At Fort Rupert, Blanshard
authorized the local magistrate to offer the Newitty a reward for the arrest of the
murderers. According to the governor, the Newitty responded by taking up arms, by

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 183

acknowledging their kinsmen had com-

mitted the crime, and by refusing to turn
them over to the magistrate. Instead, as
was their tradition, they offered to pay
compensation. Blanshard flatly rejected
their proposal and dispatched three
Royal Navy boats to the culprits’ village
to seize them. By the time this party
arrived, the Newitty had fled north. The
marines and sailors set fire to the desert-
ed settlement, but neither Blanshard nor
the naval commander thought that this
was sufficient punishment. They sent
the H. M. S. Daphne northward with
Blanshard on board to force the Newitty
to turn over the murderers. After a brief
armed clash, the villagers retreated into
the forest and Blanshard’s force burned
this settlement too, as well as all their
canoes. In the end, the Newitty yielded
up three mutilated bodies, which they
claimed were those of the murderers.
This seminal episode resulted in
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

some important interim policy changes.

The Colonial Office disapproved of “Coal Tyee,” or the Coal Chief, was one of the
Blanshard’s heavy-handed measures. The Coast Salish people who brought the coal deposits
colonial secretary, the 3rd Earl Grey, in near present-day Nanaimo, British Columbia, to
typical understated fashion, told the gov- the attention of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the
1840s. The local Salish were eager to trade the min-
ernor, “I should state for your guidance
eral to the company, but the HBC decided to develop
on future occasions that Her Majesty’s its own mining operation after the “discovery.”
Government cannot undertake to pro-
tect, or attempt to punish injuries committed upon British subjects, who voluntarily
expose themselves to the violence or treachery of the Native Tribes at a distance
from the settlements.” Legal advisers of the Crown warned the Royal Navy to move
cautiously and with a great deal more tolerance in the future if British subjects were
murdered by Native people and commanders did not witness the act.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 184 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Blanshard’s year in office also made it clear to the Colonial Office that the HBC’s
Vancouver Island colony needed a governor who understood Native people, had good
leadership skills, and would use force judiciously. These considerations led to the
appointment of HBC Chief Factor James Douglas in 1851. Douglas was an intriguing
character of mixed Scottish and “free coloured” West Indian ancestry. He was married,
à la façon du pays, to Amelia Connolly, the mixed-blood daughter of Chief Factor
William Connolly, Douglas’s former superior officer, and Susanne Pas-du-nom, a Cree.
Early in his career, Douglas’s brashness nearly cost him his life. His wife and a
Carrier chief named Kwah saved him. This important story began in 1823 when
two Carrier men at Fort George killed two HBC employees in a dispute over two
Carrier women. The company retaliated by closing the post, which was located at
the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers. Local officers wanted to take more
drastic measures to avenge the murder of their comrades. For several years they
encouraged the Carrier to kill the murderers, but the influential Kwah repeatedly
blocked his people from doing so. The chief was an elderly man who had gained
fame for his prowess as a warrior. Kwah held a noble title, which he had inherited
from his mother’s brother, and lived in a village near Fort St James, on Stuart Lake.
One of the suspects came to the village in 1828 and took refuge in Kwah’s house
while he was away; Carrier tradition held that those who had committed crimes
could use a chief’s house as a sanctuary. When he learned that the alleged offender
was nearby, the young and reckless Douglas gathered up a few of his men, marched
to Kwah’s house, and killed the man.
Several days later, Kwah and his followers arrived at Fort St James and an ugly
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

confrontation ensued. Douglas grabbed for a gun when he saw the angry mob, but
Kwah restrained him. Amelia Douglas then seized a dagger from the father of the
murdered man, but was disarmed. In the commotion, Kwah’s nephew reached
Douglas and, holding a sword to the trader’s chest, told the chief to give the word
and he would kill him. In desperation, Amelia and the wife of the HBC interpreter
promised restitution and hurled gifts at Kwah’s followers. The chief had already
made his point, and the women’s actions gave him an out. He asked his followers to
take pity on Douglas and accept the presents as adequate compensation for his
misdeeds. Today the event is commemorated locally by the inscription on Kwah’s
tombstone: “HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF GREAT CHIEF KWAH BORN
ABOUT 1755 DIED SPRING OF 1840. He once had in his hand the life of James
Douglas but was great enough to refrain from taking it.”
The “Indian policy” that Douglas implemented as governor reflected his

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 185
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Amelia Douglas, the mixed-blood wife of Governor James Douglas, was subject to discrimination in the
Vancouver Island colony. One way she responded to it was by consciously presenting herself as a model of
Victorian womanhood.

thirty-two years of experience in the fur trade, the long-standing practices of the
HBC, and the thinking of the Colonial Office. He thought it was foolish to hold
entire villages responsible for the actions of individuals, and announced that any
Native people who committed crimes against settlers would be punished according
to British law. He would apply “gunboat diplomacy” as necessary to that end. On

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 186 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

the other hand, when the newcomers offended Native people, the relatives of the
victims would receive compensation in keeping with ancient local traditions.
Disputes among Native people were their own affair.
Today Douglas is probably best remembered in British Columbia for the way
he dealt with Aboriginal title to the land. Even before assuming the governorship,
he wrote to the HBC directors in London and argued that they needed to adopt a
policy to facilitate the purchase of Native land. In reply the directors noted that a
recent parliamentary inquiry into the land claims of the New Zealand Land
Company had ruled that the Maori had a “right of occupancy,” but not title to the
land. Only those who had a “settled form of government” and cultivated the land
could hold title. In light of this ruling, the company secretary, Archibald Barclay,
instructed Douglas: “With respect to the rights of the natives, you will have to con-
fer with the chiefs of the tribes on that subject, and in your negotiations with them
you are to consider the natives as the rightful possessors of such lands only as are
occupied by cultivation, or had houses built on, at the time when the Island came
under the undivided sovereignty of Great Britain in 1846. All other land is to be
regarded as waste, and applicable to the purposes of colonization.… The right of
fishing and hunting will be continued to [the Native people], and when their lands
are registered as waste, and they conform to the same conditions with which other
settlers are required to comply, they will enjoy the same rights and privileges.”
Typically the newcomers defined Aboriginal rights in terms that were compatible
with the primary development interests of the day—agricultural colonization. The
land policy made no sense in terms of Native economic realities.
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Douglas received Barclay’s instructions in December 1849. Early the following

summer, he called together the Songhee and Esquimalt, who lived at the southern
tip of Vancouver Island, and negotiated the first land surrender with them. For a
payment of 371 blankets valued at seventeen shillings each, he persuaded the chiefs
to show their approval by making their signs on the bottom of a blank piece of
paper. Douglas then wrote to Barclay and asked him to provide a text. The one the
secretary supplied was a copy of the legal document that the New Zealand Land
Company used to buy tracts from the Maori. Douglas copied Barclay’s wording
and added the details he needed to address local circumstances. It seems odd that a
New Zealand document served as the pragmatic model for the first colonial land
surrenders on the Pacific Coast of Canada, but apparently no one paid any atten-
tion to the well-established treaty-making traditions of Upper Canada.
One peculiarity of this first treaty is the clause stating that “our [Songhees] under-

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 187

standing of this Sale, is this, that our Village Sites and Enclosed Fields are to be kept for
our own use, for the use of our Children, and for those who may follow after us; and
the land, shall be properly surveyed hereafter; it is understood however, that the land
itself, with these small exceptions becomes the Entire property of the White people for
ever.” In other words, Douglas bought only the “waste lands,” even though the HBC
did not believe the coastal people had a valid claim to them. In spite of this apparent
anomaly, the remaining thirteen surrender agreements of the so-called Douglas treaties
all contain the same clauses. From 1850 to 1854, the company obtained a total of 358
square miles (3 per cent) of prime land on Vancouver Island. The eleven treaties in the
Fort Victoria and Saanich Peninsula and the one at Nanaimo (where local people led
the HBC to coal deposits in 1851) involved various Coast Salish groups. The two
signed at Fort Rupert were with the local Kwakwaka’wakw groups.
Like the early treaties of Atlantic Canada and Upper Canada, the Douglas
treaties provided Native groups with a one-time payment for the lands they sur-
rendered, but no annuities. Douglas offered annuity payments, but the local groups
preferred a lump-sum payment. The cost to the company was nominal because,
following the precedent of Douglas’s first treaty, it paid them in goods, mostly
woollen blankets. By this time the venerable HBC striped “point blanket” rivalled
the traditional Chilkat blanket as a symbol of wealth. Because the company was
interested in land strictly for agricultural settlement and coal mining, it readily
agreed that the nations who signed the surrenders “are at liberty to hunt over the
unoccupied lands, and to carry on our fisheries as formerly.” This concession would
have seemed innocuous to Douglas and his superiors in London, but in time it
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

would become very significant to aboriginal fishers.

Colonization advanced at a snail’s pace, so the agreement that Douglas and
the various Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw groups had reached worked reason-
ably well—for a while. Nonetheless, the handful of settlers near Fort Victoria
generally thought that the governor was not forceful enough with the Songhees,
and they provided him with frequent reports about Native attacks. He knew that
the surrounding Native people held the balance of power. Accommodation was
preferable to confrontation.
Some of the friction that arose between the newcomers and the local people
took place in the Fort Victoria area and involved conflicting views of property.
Native people regarded roaming cattle as wildlife available for the taking. Even more
upsetting to the colonists, however, were the large numbers of Haida and coast
Tsimshian who began to visit Victoria annually, beginning in 1854. These northern

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 188 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

visitors did not have hostile intentions; they simply came to take advantage
of markets in the new settlement and to find work. Nevertheless, the colonists mis-
trusted all Native people. Their feelings were so strong that once Douglas became
the governor of Vancouver Island, Amelia Douglas was subjected to insults from
prominent white women. Eventually the governor sent his daughter Martha to
England to help her disguise her Native heritage. These were minor squabbles,
however, compared with the serious clashes that loomed just over the horizon.

THE GOLD RUSHES

“Gold fever” hit the West in 1849, following the discovery of gold in California.
Prospectors fanned out across the region, hoping to make other strikes in the west-
ern mountains. Like everyone else, Native people were caught up in the excite-
ment. The Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, for instance, were hopeful that
they could find enough gold in their territory to develop new trading opportunities.
In 1850 Chief Albert Edward Edenshaw led HBC officers to gold deposits at Gold
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Native placer-gold miners on the Thompson River. Aboriginal people are credited with making most of the
major gold discoveries in the West during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Many copied white mining
practices, which enabled them to go beyond the gold-panning stage to more capital-intensive sluicing.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 189

Harbour (Mitchell Inlet). However, the Haida refused to let the company mine
these deposits; they wanted to mine them themselves. They were also resentful
that Americans, having heard about the gold, came in search of it without asking
their permission. Before 1853 the Haida had already driven off one group of these
intruders from the Gold Harbour area.
A legendary early skirmish involved the American ship Susan Sturgis. In 1853
this vessel was sailing in the Queen Charlotte Islands area for trading purposes and
had let a small party of miners off to search for gold near Gold Harbour. The Royal
Navy had warned the skipper and crew that all speculators operating in the area did
so at great risk, but the Americans ignored the warning and headed north in search
of Chief Edenshaw. Descriptions of the chief portray him as young, extremely
wealthy, and very powerful, always on the lookout for new opportunities. He lived
in the heavily fortified village of Kung, located northwest of Masset. Like many
others before them, the Americans wanted Edenshaw, who was a well-known sailor,
to pilot their ship. They located him at Skidegate, and he came aboard on the con-
dition that he would be given passage to his village.
The Skidegate villagers apparently passed word overland to the Masset peo-
ple that the Susan Sturgis could be taken easily. When the ship rounded Rose Spit
(the easternmost point of Graham Island), a Masset canoe approached and
Edenshaw apparently confirmed the Skidegate villagers’ report. The following day
Chief Weah, leader of the Masset villagers, brought twenty-five canoes alongside,
under the pretence of being a trading party. They seized the crew, pillaged the
ship, and burned it. Edenshaw, who received a share of the spoils, persuaded his
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

accomplices to spare the lives of the Americans and take them to Fort Simpson,
where they would likely receive a ransom in blankets from the HBC. His accom-
plices agreed and ransomed their captives at the fort.
The possibility of further conflict died away when the gold deposits on the
Queen Charlotte Islands proved to be very small. Attention quickly shifted to the
mainland. Again local Native people made the initial strikes. Rumours of impressive
gold deposits in the Fraser River watershed had been circulating throughout the
1850s. By 1857 some groups living near the confluence of the Thompson and Fraser
rivers had begun trading placer gold to the HBC. Douglas encouraged them, antici-
pating that the trade in placer gold would become another aspect of the company’s
commercial relationship with the residents. With that goal in mind, he ordered the
construction of a post at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson in the spring
of 1858. Unfortunately, word of the gold trade leaked out, and rumours circulated

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 190 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

in San Francisco that Douglas had sent eight hundred ounces there for minting.
Thirty thousand California miners, prospectors, and “Indian” fighters quickly
descended on the region. Douglas estimated that by August 1858, more than ten
thousand of them were already combing the Fraser River corridor. Two years later,
the rush spread into the Cariboo Mountains, and by the 1870s prospectors were
combing the Skeena, Omineca, and Peace River areas.
Miners complained that Native people rustled their livestock and ruined their
crops. They objected to the attempts some groups made to tax them for working
diggings located on traditional Native territory. Aggravating the situation, many
Native people took up residence near boom towns like Yale, where they could find
work, and they often panned gold side by side with the intruders. During the sum-
mer of 1858, for instance, sixty to seventy white miners and four to five hundred
Native miners worked Hills Bar on the Fraser River. This close proximity increased
the likelihood of friction between the two groups.
Armed miners organized into “armies of conquest” had already effectively
triggered the Indian wars of Washington and Oregon. In British territory, besides
trying, often successfully, to push the local people off the gold bars, the invading
rabble plundered their food supplies and destroyed their fishing, fish-
drying, and camping sites. Some miners from California bragged that they would
“clean out all the Indians in the land.” Indiscriminate killings of Native people did
take place, but the violence was not entirely one-sided. In the lower Fraser River
canyon, the local people engaged the invaders in a bloody conflict known as the
Fraser Canyon War during the summer of 1858. Although Douglas is usually cred-
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

ited with being the one who prevented the violence from spiralling out of control,
Native people’s recollections of the event indicate that their leaders played an
important role. Mary Brent, granddaughter of the Okanagan chief N’kwala, recalled
that “during the Fraseer River trouble between the Thompsons and the whites in
1858 and 1859, [N’kwala] advocated peace, although preparing for war had the
affair not been settled. The Thompsons were against the miners and settlers.
Although he was begged by the Spokanes and Thompsons to join them in war
against the whites, he refused to allow his people to join them.”
The possibility of further conflict, and the threat that Americans would take
over the territory, forced Douglas and the British government to move quickly to
establish order and defend the sovereignty of the Crown in the region. Even before
this crisis, a British parliamentary committee had begun considering the future of
the territory in anticipation of the expiry of the HBC’s trading licence on the main-

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 191

land in 1858. The committee recom-

mended against renewal wherever set-
tlement was advanced. Parliament
agreed, ended the HBC’s rule of the
Vancouver Island colony, and established
the new colony of British Columbia on
the mainland. Douglas was appointed
governor of both colonies. He gave up
his position with the HBC.
For the people of the Pacific slope,
the influx of miners and settlers that
started in the summer of 1858 repre-
sented an important turning point in
their history. The newcomers and the
growing number of deaths due to for-
Songish chief’s sister with fish for sale is the
eign diseases, especially smallpox, set in title of this photograph. Before contact, West Coast
motion a major demographic shift in people engaged in extensive inter-nation trading of
favour of the immigrant society. The fish and fish products. After contact, they sold fish
smallpox epidemic of 1862, which to European fur traders and colonists.
began in Victoria and swept rapidly up
the coast and into the interior, was the worst calamity to strike the coastal people
since the epidemics of early contact. When it ended three years later, as many as
twenty thousand Native people had died, reducing their total population to about
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

forty thousand. The populations of some groups, such as the Haida, declined more
than 80 per cent.
The staggering death rate meant that the Native population represented much
less of a threat to the newcomers than it had a decade earlier. Worse, Douglas and
others concluded that these people were dying out. This assumption, and an
increase in racial tensions and expressions of prejudice, led the governor to change
some of his basic attitudes and policies towards Native people and their economic
rights. Believing that their only chance of survival lay in learning European ways—
particularly farming—he granted reserves only for those tracts that included village
sites, cultivated fields, and burial grounds. He no longer regarded “waste lands” as
belonging to Aboriginal nations. Furthermore, the governor took the position that
the Crown, not the Native people, held the title to the reserves, which was in
marked contrast to his stand when he had negotiated the earlier treaties. Douglas

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 192 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

This is a typical central Coast Salish winter settlement, which consisted of shed-roof plank houses that were
built close to the water, with ready access to canoes.

changed his mind partly because he believed that reserve lands could not be
protected from white encroachment unless the government kept them in trust.
Regrettably, this would not be the case here any more than it was anywhere else in
British North America.
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Even Douglas, who wanted to protect the lands set aside for Native people,
never envisaged that the reserves would become permanent features of the land-
scape. He thought of them as cultural waystations where missionaries and others
could teach the residents Christianity and the practical skills they would need to
survive in the new economic order. Believing that most Native people would even-
tually choose to make it on their own away from these refuges, Douglas gave them
the same rights to settle off-reserve lands as white settlers.
One result of this assimilationist agenda was that Douglas did not conclude
any treaties after 1854, even though the Colonial Assembly of Vancouver Island
and the British government continued to recognize Aboriginal title and encour-
aged him to buy the lands needed for settlement. In the early 1860s, the assembly
even approved expenditures for that purpose. The legislators were particularly
eager that he buy Cowichan land, which was in demand. Instead, Douglas set about

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Placed on a Little Spot 193

establishing reserves without treaties, allocating approximately ten acres, “a little

spot,” to each family, which was a meagre amount. Simultaneously, he opened
extensive areas to white settlement. Through these actions, Douglas set the colonial
governments of Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland on a path
that was at variance with the expressed wishes of many of the First Nations, politi-
cians, and settlers. He also set the stage for a struggle for land and resources
between Native groups and successive British Columbia governments that contin-
ues to this day.
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 CHAPTER 13

THE M´ETIS AND

“INDIAN”
QUESTION
That the Dominion Parliament … proceeded to organize a government for our country, giv-
ing to the Governor who was to administer the same, unlimited power … assisted by a coun-
cil to be chosen by himself, consisting of Hudson’s Bay Company officers and Canadians;
and thus your memorialists (the people) found their ancient surveys, land marks, boundaries
and muniments of title, set at naught and disregarded, and a Government established over
their heads, in the selection of the rulers and administration of which, they had no voice; and
by this process they found that their homes, their country and their liberties, were held at the
mercy of a foreign power and subject to a foreign jurisdiction.
—“Memorial of the people of Rupert’s Land and North-West” to President
Ulysses S. Grant, Red River, October 3, 1870
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

T
he strong desire of speculators and settlers in Canada, espe-
cially Canada West, to develop Rupert’s Land and the lands
beyond it—the area that comprised the Hudson’s Bay
Company’s Northern and Southern departments and where it had suzerain rights—
was one of the driving forces behind Confederation. They saw the region as a
source of raw materials and a market for eastern goods. Most Canadian annexa-
tionists wanted to simply brush aside Native people and the HBC and take control
of the region. The Métis refused to let them. Taking up arms in 1869 and 1870,
they forced the new Canadian government to address their aspirations and some of
their most pressing concerns in the Manitoba Act. The government moved more
slowly to establish the legal and administrative frameworks that it believed it need-
ed to deal with other Native people. It took a major step in that direction in 1876
when Parliament passed the Indian Act. This crucial piece of legislation consoli-

194
Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 The Métis and “Indian” Question 195

A camp of Métis, 1858.

dated earlier colonial acts dealing with the First Nations. The primary goal of the
act was to encourage assimilation. It was also supposed to protect the interests of
Native people, most of whom resided west of Ontario.

THE CANADIAN INVASION

Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Having already gained title to all the Aboriginal lands of Canada West that were
suitable for agriculture, developers cast their eyes northwestward to Rupert’s Land
for a new area to colonize. Canadian annexationists did not want to recognize the
validity of Aboriginal or HBC titles to the area they coveted. They lobbied the
British Parliament to review the company’s licence and colonizing activities, and
they drummed up excitement about the development potential of the prairie West.
Their lobbying led the Canada West and British governments to back separate well-
publicized scientific expeditions to the region in the late 1850s. The Canadian
excursion, led by Henry Youle Hind, and the British-sponsored party, commanded
by Capt. John Palliser, provided solid information about the Plains people and those
of the Rocky Mountains north of the 49th parallel, made detailed descriptions of
the agricultural potential of the prairies, gave accounts of coal and other mineral
deposits, and discussed possible transcontinental transportation routes.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 196 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Politicians and would-be developers and speculators paid little attention to

Hind’s and Palliser’s ethnographic work, but they were thrilled by their discussion
of the economic potential of the sprawling region. The information circulated
widely and had an impact well beyond Canada. It led the International Financial
Society, a syndicate of English and French bankers and stock promoters, to buy
control of the HBC in 1863. The society recapitalized the company and made a
highly successful public offering of its shares by promoting the development pos-
sibilities of the chartered territory. Subscribers hoped to make a windfall profit
from the sale of Rupert’s Land to the British or Canadian government; however,
the British government had no intention of buying the territory, and the Canadian
government could not afford the high price the company’s directors led the share-
holders to anticipate.
After protracted negotiations, Canada agreed to buy Rupert’s Land for a mere
£300,000 on March 8, 1869. The HBC kept one-twentieth of the lands of the “fer-
tile belt,” which Palliser had defined as the tall-grass prairies and parklands, and it
retained the developed lands around its numerous trading posts (approximately fifty
thousand acres). These land grants were compensation for the disappointingly small
cash payment the company received. The agreement confirmed all the titles the
HBC had issued to settlers (mostly in the Red River colony) before March 8. The
failure of HBC directors to secure a large cash settlement left a majority of the share-
holders very angry; they had expected a settlement of as much as £5 million.
The reaction of the shareholders was mild compared with that of the
Aboriginal residents of the northwest, who were outraged. The company and the
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

two governments had treated the entire affair as if it were a straightforward real-
estate deal involving vacant territory, although the company had sought and
obtained legal protection from land claims through the Rupert’s Land Act of 1868.
This act was passed by the British Parliament to facilitate the transfer of the HBC’s
title to Canada. It provided that the company would not be liable for “any claims of
Indians to compensation for lands required for purposes of settlement.” According
to the deed of surrender, the Canadian government accepted this responsibility.
What deeply offended Native people was that no one consulted them about their
land during the prolonged negotiations.
The Métis strongly feared that the sale of Rupert’s Land would hurt their eco-
nomic and political interests. They distrusted Canadians, and with good reason.
Following the Sayer trial, the HBC had made a greater effort to accommodate Métis
interests. The Red River colony remained reasonably tranquil until Upper Canadians

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 The Métis and “Indian” Question 197

began to settle there and elsewhere in the

northwest. These newcomers champi-
oned annexation to Canada, disdained
the HBC, looked down on the hunting
and trapping lifestyles of the prairie
nations and Métis, and gave little cre-
dence to the company’s, or the Native
people’s, claims to land. Dr John
Christian Schultz, leader of the small but
vociferous Canadian Party, was their main
spokesman. From 1865 to 1868 he pub-
lished the Nor’ Wester newspaper, which
championed the annexationists’ cause.
The immigrants from Canada West also
encouraged divisions within the colony
between the mixed-bloods and Métis.
By the summer of 1869, the Métis
“Young” McKay, a Métis Red River guide, is
of Red River had decided to block the shown wearing traditional dress in 1859.
unconditional transfer of Rupert’s Land to
Canada, a decision that marked a major turning point for Native people in the West.
They sprang into action when a Canadian land-survey crew arrived in August. Led by
the twenty-five-year-old Louis Riel, whose father had been among the armed group
of Métis at the Sayer trial, they stopped the government surveyors, informing them
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

that Canada had no authority in the territory. In keeping with their tradition of orga-
nizing themselves with suitable leadership—the buffalo hunt provides an example of
this—the Métis selected a National Committee and chose Louis Riel as its secretary.
They made a wise choice. Riel was one of the best-educated young Métis
living in the settlement. As a young boy he had attended school at St Boniface in
Red River. The Catholic bishop, Monseigneur Alexandre Taché, and his teachers
were greatly impressed with Riel’s ability and piety. In 1858, with Riel’s parents’
blessing, the bishop sent the fourteen-year-old Riel off to study for the priesthood
at the Collège de Montréal. He proved to be a good scholar, but after seven years
of intense study, Riel decided against a life of serving the Church and left the col-
lege. He found employment in the firm of a leading Montreal lawyer, where he
remained for a little more than a year before returning home in 1868 on the eve of
the Red River uprising.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 198 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Louis Riel (centre of second row) and his council in 1869. By use of force and skilful political manoeuvring,
Riel and his supporters prevented the government of Canada from imposing an appointed government on the
Red River settlement and forced it to recognize the Aboriginal rights of the Métis.

In October 1869, the Métis prevented William McDougall, lieutenant-

governor-designate for Rupert’s Land and the North-West Territory, from entering
Red River, and shortly thereafter they seized the HBC’s Fort Garry. After forming a
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

provisional government, the Métis set about trying to pull the colony together to
present a united front for negotiating terms of union with Canada.
The story of what happened next is well known. Sir John A. Macdonald and
his government wanted to avoid further conflict, so they invited the people of Red
River to draw up a list of demands and send a delegation to Ottawa to discuss them.
At a large public meeting held in the courtyard of Fort Garry on January 19, 1870,
Riel proposed that the English-speaking and French-speaking communities each
elect twenty representatives to a committee that would determine how best to
reply. The assembly accepted his suggestion and the Convention of Forty had their
first meeting a week later. After lengthy deliberations, they drew up a List of Rights
to present to Ottawa. At Riel’s insistence, members of the convention also created
a provisional government before they finished their work. The new government
was proclaimed on February 10, 1870, with Riel as president.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 The Métis and “Indian” Question 199

In this capacity, the Métis leader dispatched three envoys to Ottawa to submit
a revised list of terms. His government demanded that the new province
(Manitoba) be admitted to Confederation on equal terms with the other govern-
ments; all the properties, rights, and privileges that the inhabitants of the territory
enjoyed at the time of union be continued; the legislature of the province have full
control over all public lands; and everyone involved in the uprising be granted
amnesty. The provisional government also wanted the new province to include all
of what was now, for the first time, called the North-West Territories—formerly the
HBC’s Rupert’s Land and the North-West Territory. (Out of this was carved the
province of Manitoba, and in 1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan.) Privately, Riel
instructed one of the negotiators, Abbé N. J. Richot, to “[d]emand that the country
be divided into two so that the customs of two populations [French Catholic and
English Protestant] living separately may be maintained for the protection of our
most endangered rights.” In other words, Riel and his followers sought a way to
join Confederation under terms that would allow these two cultures to flourish in
the newly emerging country. Métis leaders knew that this would not be possible
without a substantial land base.
Macdonald and his close advisers rejected the idea of handing over control of
land and natural resources to the new provincial government and opposed creating
large reserves for the Métis or any other group. After all, the financially strapped
Canadian government had just paid the HBC £300,000 ($1,500,000) for its stake in
the territory, and it had still to buy Aboriginal title. In addition, the new province
the Métis wanted to create would be in a strong position to impede, perhaps even
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

block, Ottawa’s nation-building schemes, and the establishment of large areas of

reserve land would likely deflect settlers southward into the United States.
Nevertheless, concessions were made for pragmatic reasons.
The Manitoba Act was pushed through Parliament in 1870, allowing for the
entry of the province into Confederation as a nearly equal member. Ottawa
retained control of public lands and natural resources, as it would when Alberta
and Saskatchewan became provinces thirty-five years later. As a further limitation
on its economic and political power in the northwest, Ottawa insisted that
Manitoba be of “postage stamp-size.” Nevertheless, the Manitoba Act did provide
the official bilingualism the Métis wanted and the educational rights the various
denominations exercised “by law or practice at the union.”
During the negotiations leading up to the act, one of the most perplexing
issues was the Métis’ concern about the land rights of those families who held HBC

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 200 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

titles in the colony, or who squatted elsewhere on Aboriginal land, and the future
rights of their descendants. The Canadian government found itself in an awkward
position. An Ottawa politician expressed it tersely: “The Government had to do
two things, either they had to send an army to conquer those people and force them
to submit, or to consider their claims as put forward by their delegates.… [I]t would
be folly to refuse such a small concession when compared with the amount of land
which the Hudson’s Bay Company had been allowed to retain.” Faced with this real-
ity, Parliament agreed that “half-breeds” had a valid claim because of their part-
Aboriginal ancestry. It gave its approval to the section of the Manitoba Act that
stipulated: “It is expedient, towards the extinguishment of the Aboriginal Title to
the lands in the Province, to appropriate … one million four hundred thousand acres
thereof, for the benefit of the families of the half-breed residents.…” The governor
general and lieutenant-governor were given the responsibility for selecting the lots
and distributing them to the children of the “half-breed heads of families” living in
the province in 1870. The statute also recognized the right of “half-breeds” to occu-
py the long-lot farms they had already developed along the Red River. Finally, it
gave pre-emption rights to settlers located “in those parts of the Province in which
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

The interior of a Métis house in 1874. Many Métis families prospered before the influx of settlers in the
1870s by combining commercial buffalo hunting, trading, carting, farming, and working as seasonal
employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 The Métis and “Indian” Question 201

Indian Title has not been extinguished.” The purpose of this provision was to allay
the concerns of the Métis, mixed-bloods, and others who had settled beyond the
boundaries of the HBC grants included within the Peguis Treaty area.
The Manitoba Act represented a major victory for the Métis, with a crucial
exception—the act did not specify how the 1.4 million acres should be allocated
to them. Problems arose immediately. One of the most troublesome difficulties
was that officials had no idea how many inhabitants of mixed ancestry would be
eligible for the grants. The government conducted two censuses (in 1870 and
1875), but they were both undercounts because many families were away hunting
or engaged in other activities when the enumerators arrived. Making matters
worse, the first lieutenant-governor, Adam Archibald, arbitrarily decided to
include family heads in the count, even though this was in clear violation of the
act. The Métis strongly objected to his unilateral action. Previously they had tried,
but failed, to obtain government support for the idea of blocking sales of any allo-
cated lands for at least a generation. Archibald flatly rejected this notion because
he thought it ran counter to the trend of bringing “Real Estate more and more to
the condition of personal property and abolishing restraints and impediments on
its free use and transmission.” Having failed to gain this concession, influential
Métis did not want heads of families included among those who were entitled to
receive land because these adults, most of whom were illiterate, had the right to
sell their holdings immediately. Minors, on the other hand, presumably could not
do so until they reached the age of majority. By making sure that only the children
received warrants for parcels of land, Métis leaders thought that the land base
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

their people had obtained would be safe during this crucial transitional period. In
the end they had their way, and family heads were stricken from the list of those
eligible for land grants.
Métis leaders also pressed to have the land distributed in contiguous blocks so
that their people could control sizable territories collectively. Initially the govern-
ment resisted this request, but in 1872 it yielded.
While government officials and the Métis wrangled over land-distribution
procedures, settlers from Ontario flocked to Manitoba. At first, Ottawa gave the
newcomers the right to preempt land ahead of survey crews and before the Métis
had selected their reserve plots. This angered the Métis, and the spectre of vio-
lence caused the government to rescind the practice in 1871. Nonetheless, these
early preemptions further complicated the land-allocation plan.
After several false starts, the government finally distributed the reserved land

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 202 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

in 240-acre parcels in the mistaken belief that approximately 5,100 children were
eligible to receive grants. In fact, 7,027 bona fide claimants came forward, of whom
6,034 received parcels of land and 993 obtained certificates (scrip) valued at $240
apiece instead of land. The government arrived at this figure based on the assump-
tion that the land was worth about $1 an acre on average. Although officials had
largely finished making the allotments by 1881, the process dragged on for years.
Remarkably, Louis Riel’s son received the last grant in 1900; he had been absent
from Manitoba in 1875. The government continued to process late scrip applica-
tions as late as 1919.
Unfortunately, the Métis leaders’ fear that little of the land would remain in
the hands of their people for very long proved to be well founded. Speculators did
a brisk business in land and scrip. A large number of Métis sold their land, or their
claim to it, so that they could move west in pursuit of the retreating buffalo herds or
to reestablish themselves well beyond the frontier settlements. Many of them chose
the North and South Saskatchewan River valleys, but some settled as far away as
the Peace River valley. In the end, the idea of giving the warrants to minors pro-
vided almost no protection for the Métis land reserves. A large number of the chil-
dren conveyed their entitlements through a power of attorney.
The politically contentious issue of pardoning Louis Riel was another acute
problem for the Canadian government. During the Red River uprising, a number of
Canadian malcontents attempted to overthrow the provisional government and were
arrested. Thomas Scott, a violent and boisterous Orangeman from Ulster, was the
most obstreperous of them. Riel’s government court-martialled and executed him—
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

thereby making its only major political blunder. From that day forward, Riel was a
marked man in the eyes of the Red River Canadian annexationists led by Dr Schultz,
who held “indignation meetings” in Ontario to inflame public opinion against Riel.
A pardon for Riel was out of the question, even though the Canadian government
had promised a general amnesty on December 6, 1869, in a pragmatic gesture aimed
at persuading the rebels to put down their arms. In February 1872, the Métis leader
fled to the United States for safety, helped by a grateful Prime Minister Macdonald,
who covered his expenses. Riel was so popular among the Métis, however, that they
even elected him to the federal Parliament while he was in exile.
In 1875, the House of Commons granted an unconditional amnesty to all who
had taken part in the uprising—except for Riel and two others. It gave Riel a condi-
tional absolution; he was banished from Canada for five years. Riel spent nearly all of
the next ten years in the United States, where he became a schoolteacher in

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 The Métis and “Indian” Question 203

Montana. Outside Manitoba, the country remained deeply divided about how Riel
and the Métis should have been treated. French-Catholic Quebec strongly identified
with Riel, the Métis, and their cause. Most people in English Protestant Ontario
wanted revenge against the Métis and their leader. They had to wait until 1885.

THE INDIAN ACT

After Confederation, the Canadian government faced the difficult job of develop-
ing the legal framework it needed to discharge the responsibility for Aboriginal
affairs it had inherited, with reluctance, from the imperial government. It took nine
years before Parliament passed the first Indian Act in 1876, which combined all
laws affecting Indian people. The consolidated act provided for the uniform treat-
ment of “Indians” everywhere in Canada.
The act defined “Indians” as being men who belonged to a band that held
lands or reserves in common, or for whom the federal government held funds in
trust. The wives and children of these men also had Indian status. Women who
married outside the status-Indian community—and their children born of the mar-
riage—lost their Indian status and all rights associated with status and band member-
ship forever. This provision violated long-standing post-contact marriage practices.
Ostensibly, it was intended to protect Indian lands from white opportunists. Indian
men were free to choose a non-Indian partner, who then acquired Indian status.
According to the act, all “legal” Indians were wards of the federal government and
were to be treated as minors without the full privileges of citizenship. (In this and
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

subsequent chapters, the term “Indian” is applied to those who were defined as such
under the 1876 act and its various revisions.)
The new legislation placed Indian reserve land in the trust of the Crown and
stated that this land could not be mortgaged or seized for defaulted debts, nor could
it be taxed. In the spirit of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, it specified that reserve
lands could be sold only with the approval of a majority of the adult band members
and the superintendent-general of Indian Affairs. Furthermore, only the Crown could
purchase it. The government was supposed to hold the proceeds from any such sales
in trust, although 10 per cent of the revenue could be paid directly to band members.
Likewise, timber and mineral resources on reserve land could not be harvested or
removed unless the same procedures for obtaining consent had been followed.
Parliament made no provision in the act to accommodate the different kinds
of Aboriginal governments that existed at the time of Confederation. It simply

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 204 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

A census taker visiting a Cree village in 1881. The Canadian government did not know how many
Aboriginal people lived in the prairie West when it negotiated treaties with them in the 1870s, even though
these agreements committed it to a variety of per capita payments. Subsequently, politicians in Ottawa
became alarmed when the Native population proved to be larger than they had expected.

stated that elected chiefs and councils would govern all bands for three-year terms.
Only the adult males could vote. Band councils were given various responsibilities,
including overseeing public works and the suppression of “intemperance.”
Concerning the latter, the Indian Act outlawed the manufacture, sale, or consump-
tion of liquor on reserves. Because the government aimed to “civilize” all Indians
eventually, the original legislation included a provision for enfranchisement. As a
first step towards becoming a full-fledged Canadian citizen, an Indian had to prove
that he was literate in English or French, of good moral character, and free of
debt—terms most Canadians would have found it difficult to meet. Next, the appli-
cant had to obtain an allotment of reserve land and manage it for three years in
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

the same way a non-Indian would. At the end of this probationary term, the
superintendent-general of Indian Affairs could make the candidate a full-fledged
citizen and give him title to his allotment. Subsequent amendments to the Indian
Act made enfranchisement easier in the hope of encouraging assimilation. A 1920
amendment (repealed two years later) and one reintroduced in 1933 gave the
superintendent-general the power to enfranchise Native people without their
approval. Most resisted because, until 1960, they lost their Indian status when they
gained full citizenship rights.
Superficially, the Indian Act of 1876 created a structure that was designed to
teach Native people democratic principles, while it protected their interests until
they could stand on their own feet as Canadian citizens. The reality was that the act
allowed the federal government to interfere in all aspects of Indians’ lives, because
Parliament had the right to amend it without first obtaining their permission. The

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 The Métis and “Indian” Question 205

government frequently amended the act over the years to push forward its own
agenda for these people. In short, the act created a special class of people desig-
nated solely on the basis of their race, and it established a means for governing
them autocratically.
Because Canada had assumed the responsibility for governing Indians very
reluctantly, the government did not give any priority to their needs. In this respect
the new country was no different from its colonial predecessors. The Indian Affairs
Department began its existence as an unwanted stepchild in the public service. In
the 1860s a separate branch had been created within the colony of Canada’s Crown
Lands Department, and the commissioner of that department also served as chief
superintendent of Indian Affairs. For the first eight years after Confederation, the
Department of the Secretary of State for the Provinces looked after Indian affairs. In
1873, federal politicians created the Indian Lands Branch, shifting the portfolio to
the Department of the Interior, which mainly promoted western development.
Simultaneously, a short-lived Board of Commissioners was appointed to administer
Indian affairs in Manitoba, British Columbia, and the North-West Territories. Two
years later, the board was replaced with a system of superintendents and agents,
but a commissioner for the North-West Territories was retained. In 1880 Parliament
created a separate Department of Indian Affairs, but its minister also held the port-
folio of minister of the Interior.
This constant restructuring shows that politicians believed it was a good idea
to tie Indian Affairs to the federal ministry responsible for natural resources and
western development. Once established, this tradition remained in place, except for
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

a short period between 1950 and 1966, when Indian Affairs was housed in the
Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Linking the department to the min-
istries responsible for natural resources, immigration, and economic development
was a bad arrangement for Native people everywhere in Canada. Conflicts of inter-
est were inevitable, because the minister responsible for reserve lands and aborigi-
nal title in unsurrendered territories also looked after the acquisition and disposition
of public lands. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the department often did not
defend the interests of Native people.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 CHAPTER 14

TREATY MAKING
Our hands are poor but our heads are rich, and it is riches that we ask so that we may be
able to support our families as long as the sun rises and the water flows.
—Ma-we-do-pe-nais, Fort Francis chief, addressing Alexander Morris,
Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the North-West Territories during
Treaty 3 negotiations, October 4, 1873

B
y the time of Confederation, Native people living in the area
of old Rupert’s Land sensed that dramatic changes were tak-
ing place; they were very concerned about their future. They
took advantage of treaty negotiations with Canada to air their grievances about the
sale of Rupert’s Land and to wring concessions from the government that would
help them adjust to the new economic order in ways that were compatible with
their traditions. They secured treaty rights to schooling and training, as well as
some protection against the economic hardships they would face if forced to aban-
don hunting as a livelihood. In the grassland area, Native leaders sought ways to
guarantee that their people would remain a political force in the region.
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

NEGOTIATING THE NUMBERED TREATIES

The Métis victory at Red River was of little benefit to the western Native groups.
Many of them were angry about the recent sale of Rupert’s Land, because they had
never relinquished their lands to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Plains Cree made
their feelings known about this crucial matter during treaty negotiations at Fort
Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, in 1874. A leader named Otahaoman (“The Gambler”)
told government representatives: “The Company have no right to this earth, but when
they are spoken to they do not desist.… I hear now, it was the Queen gave the land [to
the company]. The Indians thought it was they who gave it to the Company.” Pis-
Qua (also spelled Paskwaw or Pasquah), who led a band of Plains Saulteaux, pointed to
the manager of the Fort Qu’Appelle post, who was acting as host to the government
party, and said, “You told me you had sold our land for so much money, £300,000. We

206
Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 207

want that money.” By interfering with the

geological survey and by blocking the
construction of telegraph lines on their
lands, the Plains Cree made it abundantly
clear to the Canadian government that
development could not proceed without
their being compensated first.
Besides seeking fundamental justice,
the various nations of old Rupert’s Land
believed that negotiating treaties with
Canada offered them the opportunity to
address their economic problems and to
share the benefits everyone expected
agricultural settlement would bring. In
general, their demands indicated that
most of them wanted to maintain valued
traditions while participating in the new
economy. They also wanted to retain The Siksika leader Yellow Horse wearing a treaty
coat and medals. The presentation of coats and
some control over their own destinies
medals to Native leaders at the conclusion of treaties
within the context of the expanding was a continuation of an old fur-trade custom.
Canadian state. Each group made a num- English and French traders gave coats and medals to
ber of specific requests as well, according their Native trading “captains” to retain their loyalty.
to its particular circumstances.
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

The woodland nations who concluded treaties during this era faced common
problems. Fur prices had begun to plummet in 1871, signalling the beginning of the
long depression of the late nineteenth century, and they did not rebound until after
1885. The price collapse ravaged trapping incomes and drove Native trappers deep
into debt. Treaty money offered them the prospect of relief—if trappers could
obtain enough annuity money to buy their annual outfits, they would not have to
turn to the traders for credit. By entering into agreements with the government,
trappers also hoped to address the new threat posed by incoming prospectors, min-
ers, and settlers. Many of these newcomers lived in or near the forests and trapped
part-time or full-time to weather bad economic periods and to raise money for
other activities. They often used techniques that were extremely destructive: for
example, they frequently used strychnine-laced bait, which killed many of the
Native hunting dogs. Prospectors set forest habitats on fire to make it easier to

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 208 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Manitoba Indian Treaty-Conference with the Chiefs appeared in the September 9, 1871, edition
of the Canadian Illustrated News. Aboriginal people of the prairie West tried to secure their economic
futures through treaty negotiations, beginning with Treaties 1 and 2, signed in 1871.

search for gold and other mineral deposits. The woodland nations pleaded with
the government to stop such abuses. The widespread depletion of fur and game in
many areas, but particularly between Lake Superior and the Winnipeg River, forced
many Native people to seek federal assistance in developing small-scale farming
operations to help them cope with periodic food shortages.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 209

Native economic interests ranged well beyond hunting and trapping. The
Ojibwa of Rainy River country, for instance, looked for ways to profit from the
new business possibilities in their district. They lived near the Dawson Road, which
the Canadian government had started to build in 1858. By the early 1870s, as many
as sixteen hundred people used the road annually to travel from Lake Superior to
the Red River. The Ojibwa wanted to be paid for the right of passage through their
territory, they expected compensation for the wood used in building construction
along the Dawson Road and to fuel the steamboats, and they claimed that they
owned the settlers’ houses because the intruders had not paid for the timber they
had used to build them. In addition, they wanted to lease access and resource rights,
rather than sell their lands to the Crown.
The Ojibwa reacted in a similar way to immigrants’ stories about plans for a
railway and a telegraph line through their territory. In the case of the railway, they
wanted the government to grant them free rides forever as partial payment for the
use of their land. In 1873 an Ojibwa negotiator said, “I ask you a question—I see
your roads here [Fort Francis] passing through the country, and some of your
boats—useful articles that you use for yourself. Bye and bye we shall see things
that run swiftly, that go by fire—carriages—and we ask you that us Indians may not
have to pay their passage on these things, but can go free.”
Like Native groups in British Columbia, the Ojibwa wanted to benefit from
mining development. When government negotiators for Treaty 3 told the Ojibwa
that their rocky and forested lands were not as valuable as those of their grassland
neighbours, a wise chief is recorded to have replied, “The sound of the rustling of the gold
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

is under my feet where I stand; we have a rich country.… [I]t is the Great Spirit who gave
us this; where we stand upon is the Indians’ property, and belongs to them.”
The Plains groups had much more pressing concerns than the Rainy River
Ojibwa. The buffalo herds were in headlong retreat towards their last refuge—the
lush slopes of the Cypress Hills and the Montana territory south of the border.
This meant that Métis, Plains nations, and non-Native hunters were all competing
for the remaining animals within a contracting supply area. Some Plains groups
had already experienced a year or more of deprivation and starvation because of
reduced numbers of buffalo. Several leaders believed that their only option was to
take up farming. Abraham Wikaskokiseyin (Sweet Grass), an important Cree chief
and leader of the Fort Pitt band, was one of them. He and his followers wanted the
government to promise to help them learn how to farm.
Other Native leaders believed that it was not too late to save the buffalo.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 210 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear), a neighbour

and close friend of Wikaskokiseyin, was
among them. He blamed Métis and
white hunters for ruthlessly pursuing the
dwindling buffalo. Non-Native hunters
were particularly objectionable: they
used repeating rifles to kill countless buf-
falo for their hides, and they poisoned
the carcasses with strychnine to destroy
wolves so that they could obtain the
skins of these animals too. Mistahimaskwa
wanted the Canadian government to
move quickly to protect the remaining
herds and demanded that it set aside a
large territory in the plains exclusively
for Aboriginal use. He opposed the
idea of having the people settle down
in small scattered reserves, knowing
Abraham Wikaskokiseyin (Sweet Grass) was an
influential leader of the Fort Pitt Cree. that this would weaken their voice.
Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker),
another highly influential Cree leader, held the same opinion. At the commence-
ment of treaty talks in 1874, he replied to the government negotiators’ offer to pro-
vide reserves: “The governor mentions how much land is to be given to us. He says
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

640 acres, one mile square for each family, he will give us. 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.”
During the lengthy treaty negotiations, the buffalo population continued its
rapid decline. Many proud and fiercely independent buffalo hunters found them-
selves reduced to eating gophers and prairie dogs to survive. This experience drove
them to ask for assurances of government aid during times of pestilence and
starvation.
Although these desperate economic circumstances made the Plains Nations
apprehensive of their future, until the late 1870s they remained a powerful mili-
tary threat that Canada could not afford to ignore. Alexander Morris, who was the
lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories from 1872 to 1876 and of
Manitoba from 1873 to 1878, was well aware of this reality. In 1873 he reported

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 211

that the Cree and Siksika, who had reached a peace accord in 1871, and their
Assiniboine allies could put 5,000 mounted warriors in the field. He warned Ottawa
that these nations did not think that Canada could mount a credible force against
them. Additionally worrying to Morris were the overtures that Tatanka-Iyotanka
(Sitting Bull), legendary chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota of the United States, was
making to the Canadian tribes to ally with his people to fight against further
American and Canadian expansion into their respective homelands. Morris under-
stood that if these former enemies did forge such an alliance it would be disastrous
for Canada. For these reasons, he urged the federal government to proceed expe-
ditiously with treaty-making in the Prairie West.
At the time, Canada was primarily interested in obtaining lands in the south-
western portion of former Rupert’s Land (the present-day area of northwestern
Ontario and the Prairie Provinces) for railway construction and agricultural colo-
nization. This was the area covered by Treaties 1 to 4, 6, and 7. Establishing a steam-
boat system on Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan River and the prospects of a
commercial fishery on Lake Winnipeg led the government to negotiate Treaty 5. The
Klondike gold rush at the end of the century and the interest it generated in the prime
fur country northwest of Edmonton, one of the jumping-off points for the gold fields
in the late nineteenth century, provided a catalyst for Treaty 8. The threats of
Aboriginal people living in the Peace River area to wage war against the intruding
miners, prospectors, and settlers unless the government signed a treaty with them
provided an added incentive for the government to come to the treaty table. Treaty 9
(and the additions to it) and a major amendment to Treaty 5 resulted from several dif-
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

ferent development pressures in the early twentieth century. The most important of
these were expanded mineral exploration and mining, the growth of the pulp-and-
paper industry, the development of hydroelectric-power-generating systems, and the
building of a second transcontinental railway with branch lines to James Bay and
western Hudson Bay. A major discovery in 1920 of petroleum at Norman Wells on
the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories (the area east of what became the
Yukon Territory in 1898) was instrumental in the negotiation of Treaty 11.
In all these cases, it is important to note that Native people asked for treaties
well before the government was willing to sign them. Considerable numbers of
Native people who lived beyond treaty boundaries moved into surrendered terri-
tories during poor economic times to share treaty benefits with their neighbours
and relatives. This happened in northern Manitoba, for instance, during the late
nineteenth century, when many Cree living outside the original Treaty 5 area

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 212 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

moved into that district. This migration did not end until the first decade of the
twentieth century, when additions to Treaty 5 brought the rest of northern
Manitoba within the framework of the agreement.
Morris was commissioner, the key government negotiator, for Treaties 3, 4, 5,
and 6 while he served as lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories.
Looking back on his negotiating experience in 1880, he wrote, “The Indians are
fully aware that their old mode of life is passing away. They are not unconscious of
their destiny; on the contrary, they are harassed with fears as to the future of their
children and the hard present of their own lives.” In other words, he understood
what later generations of Canadians would forget—that the Native people were
not wedded to their past, nor were they blind to the future.
The Canadian government, however, was not willing to negotiate with Native
people on a wide range of issues; the politicians simply wanted to obtain land as
cheaply as possible. They gave Morris and other treaty negotiators little room to
manoeuvre. For example, they flatly rejected the Ojibwa idea of paying royalties to
Indians for rights of access or for resources, preferring agreements modelled closely
after the Robinson treaties of 1850—albeit with richer compensation packages. The
so-called numbered treaties provided the following: annual allowances for hunting
and fishing supplies; triennial clothing allowances ranging from $500 to $2,000 a year,
depending on the treaty; annuities ranging from $4 to $5 for adults and children and
from $15 to $25 for headmen and chiefs; and lump-sum payments of varying amounts
to the chiefs and their followers when they signed a treaty. The government promised
to provide schools on the reserves when the Indians requested them. The Indians had
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

the right to pick the locations of their reserves, but the amount of allotted land varied
from 160 acres to one square mile for each family of five, depending on the treaty. In
response to Native concerns about the impact that alcohol trading was having on
their societies, government negotiators included provisions in the treaties that banned
the introduction, sale, or drinking of alcohol on the reserves.
Compared with what the HBC eventually received for its residual stake in
Rupert’s Land—approximately $96 million between 1891 and 1930—the Native
people received niggardly compensation for the territory they surrendered. So,
given their aspirations, why did they agree to these treaties? There are two likely
explanations. The agreements did address many of their most pressing concerns,
and officials often gave Native people the impression that they were “getting some-
thing for nothing.” During Treaty 3 negotiations, government spokesmen repeat-
edly promised that “when you have made your treaty you will still be free to hunt

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 213
TREAYNDL-CIMS
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Tlicho
Gitxsan
Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 214 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Cree chiefs meeting Edgar Dewdney, Indian commissioner and lieutenant-governor of the North-West
Territories, at Regina, immediately after the North-West Rebellion of 1885. The controversial Dewdney is
shown in the left foreground. Piapot, who was one of the Cree leaders, is second from the right.

over much of the land included in the treaty. Much of it is rocky and unfit for cul-
tivation. Till these lands are needed for use you will be free to hunt over them, and
make all the use of them you have made in the past.” All the numbered treaties con-
tain a similar clause. Later, Morris also promised during Treaty 6 negotiations, “I see
them [the Indians of Treaties 1 to 5] receiving money from the Queen’s
Commissioners to purchase clothing for their children; at the same time I see them
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

retaining their old mode of living with the Queen’s gift in addition.”
This duplicitous and very successful negotiating strategy came under attack by
none other than Dr Schultz, who served as a member of Parliament from 1871 to
1882. Although he was not sympathetic to Native causes, he probably feared trouble
from Plains Indians when he pointed out to the House of Commons in 1877 that the
government was persuading the Indians to “part with their birth right for a mere trifle.
The reserve question not being fixed, the Indian is under the impression that the
country is still practically his for hunting purposes. This answers very well till the
necessities of colonization force him on to the reserve.” The Plains Cree and other
nations would soon learn the bitter truth of Schultz’s observation as their affairs were
taken over by a succession of narrow-minded and mean-spirited government officials.
From the point of view of Canada’s politicians, the country’s relationship with
the Plains nations got off to a terrible start. After 1876, the rapid rise of annuity and

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 215

relief costs alarmed them. Echoing the earlier confusion about the number of Métis,
officials admitted to Parliament that when they embarked on the treaty-making path,
they had not known that there were so many Native people living in the treaty areas
of the North-West Territories, and even as late as 1882 the government was still
unsure of the numbers. It often took government agents several years after concluding
a treaty to count all the Indians who lived within its boundaries. Enumerators usually
missed a substantial number of people in their first censuses and many nations did not
immediately sign the treaty encompassing their territory. Once a band did join, its
members had the right to claim arrears annuities. Making substantial financial com-
mitments to Native people based on incomplete information and during the depths of
a depression understandably created great anxiety among Ottawa politicians.
The simultaneous collapse of the buffalo-hunting economies on the prairies
contributed to their sense of alarm. By the time Palliser and Hind led their expedi-
tions to the West, the region’s people already knew that the herds were declining,
and some Plains Cree had already begun to experiment with farming. However,
neither the Native people nor anyone in Ottawa had expected the buffalo popula-
tion to fall as rapidly as it did.
The foresight that the Plains Nations had shown in wringing the concession
from the government to help them in times of famine soon came to haunt politicians.
When relief expenses shot upwards in the late 1870s and passed the $550,000-a-
year mark in 1882, recriminations flew back and forth across the House about the
wisdom of having made this commitment. Dr Schultz stood up in the Commons
and charged that “[t]he necessity for this expenditure commenced with the sanc-
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

tion, by the late Administration, of one of the vicious conditions of Treaty # 6 …

the result of the clause agreeing that the government should furnish food in times of
scarcity—was followed by a vote for that purpose at the very next session of
Parliament, and we have found the constant occurrence of a similar necessity at
every session since.” Shortly thereafter, Sir John A. Macdonald replied with the
brutal frankness of the pragmatist that he was: “Of course the system is tentative
and it is expensive, especially in feeding destitute Indians, but it is cheaper to feed
them than to fight them, and humanity will not allow us to let them starve … the
country will not allow us to let them starve for the sake of economy.”
Regrettably, Edgar Dewdney, who served as Indian commissioner for
Manitoba and the North-West Territories from 1879 to 1888, had no qualms about
being ruthless. He used the threat of starvation to bend Native people to his will.
When he took office, the commissioner faced two immediate problems. Many

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 .

216 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Plains Cree resented the government’s slow pace in implementing treaties 1, 2, 4,

and 6. Those who had signed the treaties were unhappy because federal officials
had delivered so few of the promised livestock and little of the farming equipment;
they had not surveyed most of the reserves; and they had taken no steps to preserve
the few remaining buffalo. Some of the most influential Plains Indian leaders
refused to join Treaty 4 or 5 unless they could obtain improvements in the terms.
Mistahimaskwa, who led the largest group, was probably the most important,
and certainly is the best known, of the Cree hold-outs. He refused to bind his peo-
ple to the will of the Canadian government for a few gifts. “We want none of the
Queen’s presents: when we set a fox trap we knock him on the head; we want no
bait.” Morris considered Mistahimaskwa and his followers troublemakers for
expressing their concerns.
Mistahimaskwa and other Plains Cree leaders proved to be extremely tough
opponents. He and two close allies, Minahikosis (Little Pine) and Piapot, relent-
lessly pursued the idea of creating an Indian territory for all the Plains Nations.
Collectively, these three commanded the loyalty of about 50 per cent of the Indians
living in the Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 areas. They set their sights on establishing the
proposed reserve in the Cypress Hills, located in the southwestern portion of Treaty 4.
This area still teemed with wildlife and it was close to the few remaining buffalo
herds, which now mostly roamed on their last refuge in Montana. However, skir-
mishes between the Plains Cree and American Native groups in 1879 made it clear
to the Cree that they would no longer be able to hunt in the United States.
Consequently, Minahikosis and Piapot decided to join Treaty 4, and in 1879 they
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

applied for adjacent reserves in the Cypress Hills near Fort Walsh.
If Mistahimaskwa had joined his two allies and the federal government had
granted their requests for contiguous reserves, they would have created the unified
Indian territory they sought. In the spring of 1880, the goal seemed attainable when
Canadian officials indicated that they were willing to grant Minahikosis and Piapot the
reserves they wanted, but shortly thereafter Dewdney overruled his officials. Fearing
that a large Native settlement could be a threat to government authority in the region,
he decided to prevent the Plains leaders from establishing one. This was in clear vio-
lation of treaty provisions that gave them the right to select their reserve sites. In the
autumn of 1879, the commissioner tried to force treaty hold-outs to sign up by telling
them that only those who had signed treaties could expect food relief. He hired Indian
agents and farm instructors to serve as spies and rewarded Indians who were compliant.
To drive the Cree from the Cypress Hills, he ordered the closing of Fort Walsh and the

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 217

withdrawal of all government services in the area so that the local groups would have
no one to turn to if they needed help. The Cree decided to head north in 1882, most-
ly because any further access to the Montana herds had been blocked by the
Americans, and they faced the prospect of severe food shortages in the Cypress Hills
without access to government assistance. In the end, Mistahimaskwa yielded to the
wishes of his people and signed Treaty 4.
Although they had faced numerous setbacks, the Cree remained resolute in
their pursuit of a unified territory. They now attempted to obtain adjoining reserves
farther north in the vicinity of Indian Head and Battleford, Saskatchewan.
Dewdney responded by threatening to cut off the rations of any Indian who attend-
ed councils to plan such actions. He also said he would arrest chiefs (on trumped-up
charges, if necessary) who took part and have them incarcerated. Mistahimaskwa,
Piapot, and others persisted in spite of this terror tactic, and they might have suc-
ceeded had the North-West Rebellion of 1885 not overtaken them.

THE NORTH-WEST REBELLION OF 1885

Trouble had been brewing in the North and South Saskatchewan River valleys ever
since the Red River crisis of 1870. Métis and mixed-bloods had established some
large settlements—the most notable being Batoche, St Laurent, and Prince Albert.
French and English Canadians had also moved into the territory, and land-
development companies had begun staking out substantial blocks of land. There
were two reasons for the high interest in this region: it lay in the heart of the fertile
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

belt, and until 1881, the transcontinental railway was supposed to traverse it. (In
1881, the Canadian Pacific Railway chose a shorter, more southerly, route.)
Well before the 1880s, the Métis and other settlers in the Saskatchewan River
valley had been trying to obtain title to the lands they had developed to protect
them from encroachment by newcomers or speculators. Local Métis petitioned
Ottawa for recognition of their claims as early as 1873. Over the next few years,
they sent numerous other written appeals, but all they received in reply were terse
acknowledgements and a promise of future consideration. The English-speaking
mixed-bloods were treated in a similar fashion. It was not until 1879 that the feder-
al government added a clause to the 1872 Dominion Lands Act that gave the
governor general the authority “to satisfy any claims existing in connection with the
extinguishment of the Indian title, preferred by mixed-bloods resident in the North-
West Territories outside the limits of Manitoba … by granting land to such persons,

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 218 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Isapo-nuxika (Crowfoot), a very influential Siksika leader, and his family. Isapo-nuxika refused to let his
people join the North-West Rebellion of 1885 in the belief that a violent confrontation would be futile.

to such extent and on such terms and conditions, as may be deemed expedient.” Yet
the government did nothing further about the issue. Recognition of the validity of
their claims was of little value to the Métis without an accompanying offer of land
grants. The slow pace of the land survey, disgruntlement over other provisions of the
Dominion Lands Act, and the lack of a representative territorial government all
added to the feelings of unease among longtime residents.
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

The Canadian government did not address these problems in time to ward off
the North-West Rebellion of 1885. The estimated $5 to $20 million that it cost to
subdue the Métis, and the handful of Indians and mixed-bloods who joined them, far
exceeded the few hundred thousand dollars it would have cost the government to
settle Métis land claims. The great question is this: Why didn’t the government act
decisively and prevent this terrible incident from taking place?
Regardless of how this misadventure is explained, the fact remains that the Métis
and the Plains Cree were the ones who paid dearly for it. A number of factors worked
against them. In May 1884 the English- and French-speaking communities sent a
delegation to Montana territory to beg Louis Riel to come and assist them. Although
Riel was well established in his new home, he had not forgotten his Métis roots. He had
always been a deeply religious man, but now he thought of himself as a prophet destined
to establish a new religion in the northwest. This belief set him on a collision course

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 219

with the Catholic clergy, many of whom had supported him earlier at Red River. Their
opposition hurt the cause. On the eve of the outbreak, the mixed-bloods and other set-
tlers also broke ranks with the Métis when the government yielded to some of their
demands. Finally, the West was not as isolated as it had been in 1870. Ottawa had built
the roads, steamship facilities, and railways needed to promote immigration, establish a
viable agricultural economy, and protect their investments. In particular, although gaps
remained in the CPR line, it was sufficiently complete to enable the federal govern-
ment to dispatch heavily armed troops shortly after the fighting began.
On March 18 and 19, 1885, the Métis formed a provisional government and an
armed force at Batoche, to the northeast of what is now Saskatoon. Riel was elected
president and Gabriel Dumont was chosen as military commander. The new gov-
ernment issued a Revolutionary Bill of Rights, in which the Métis claimed ownership
of their farms. Fighting began on March 26 at Duck Lake, when a party of North-
West Mounted Police (NWMP) and vol-
unteers, who were on their way to
Batoche, clashed with Métis defenders.
The rebels were triumphant.
Dumont, a legendary buffalo hunter,
proved to be an excellent guerrilla fighter
and leader. Guerrilla fighting offered the
Métis their best chance, given the eco-
nomic climate and other problems the
Canadian government faced. As it turned
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

out, the Canadians did not have to fight

this type of war. In May Riel insisted that
Dumont switch tactics and have his forces
dig in at Batoche. However, Dumont did
not have the men, the heavy weapons, or
the stockpiles of ammunition he needed
to fight a protracted defence there. On
May 12, 1885, his mixed force of three Gabriel Dumont was the leader of the
hundred Métis, Cree, and Lakota suffered Saskatchewan Métis before the North-West
Rebellion of 1885. He led the Métis forces during
a crushing defeat at the hands of the much
the conflict. Afterwards, he fled to the United
larger Canadian force, which was armed States, where he appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild
with artillery and a new, frightful West Show as a marksman. He returned to
weapon—the Gatling gun. Saskatchewan in 1888 and died there in 1906.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 220 An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People

Riel surrendered shortly after the Battle of Batoche. The government prompt-
ly tried, convicted, and hanged him for treason. The Métis were deeply offended.
Their descendants have waged a campaign for a posthumous pardon for him, which
has thus far been unsuccessful.
The Rebellion played into Dewdney’s hands by giving him the long-awaited
opportunity to use force to end the struggle of Plains Cree for more autonomy. Until
the outbreak of hostilities at Duck Lake, the Cree had steadfastly refused all Métis
entreaties to join them. The experience of their American cousins south of the bor-
der, particularly those of Sitting Bull’s people who had defeated General Custer at the
Little Big Horn River in 1876, made it clear that armed conflict, even if temporarily
successful, ultimately led to disaster for Native people. The Cree troubles began
when the people living on several reserves in the vicinity of Battleford learned of
the engagement at Duck Lake and concluded that it would make the local
Department of Indian Affairs agent more receptive to their pleas for extra rations.
They decided to travel to the town and demand clothing, sugar, tobacco, powder,
and shot. Pitikwahanapiwiyin accompanied them, apparently with the intention of
being one of their spokesmen. However, as the large party approached Battleford,
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

Battle of Batoche, 1885, Illustrated War News. After initial successes in a series of small skirmishes,
the Métis, Cree, and Lakota forces were defeated at Batoche on May 12, 1885.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.
 Treaty Making 221

The Cree leaders Mistahimaskwa (front row, second from left) and Pitikwahanapiwiyin (front right) after
their surrender in 1885. Both men were sentenced to three-year prison terms on trumped-up charges.

the agent and all the townsfolk fled in terror, fearing an attack was imminent. They
took refuge in the NWMP barracks. Following this unexpected turn of events, the
destitute Cree helped themselves to the abandoned larders of the town and plun-
dered some of the stores before retreating to Pitikwahanapiwiyin’s reserve.
Elsewhere, dissident groups on various reserves, including Mistahimaskwa’s,
took advantage of the hostilities to seek retribution against settlers and govern-
ment agents for past offences. These were the very kinds of incidents that Dewdney
Copyright © 2016. McGill-Queen's University Press. All rights reserved.

could use to justify destroying the Cree political leadership. Although he quietly
informed officials in Ottawa that he believed the Cree acts of violence at Battleford
and Duck Lake were simply actions of desperate people driven more by hunger
than anything else, Dewdney publicly claimed that the Cree had joined forces with
the Métis. He issued an official proclamation warning the Cree that those who left
their reserves would be considered rebels. Those who had taken up arms were
forced to surrender, and Dewdney used the courts to have Mistahimaskwa and
Pitikwahanapiwiyin tried and convicted on trumped-up treason-felony charges.
When the two chiefs emerged from Stony Mountain Prison, after serving only part
of their three-year terms, they were broken men. Using these tactics, Dewdney
succeeded in placing the Cree under the yoke of the federal government just in
time for the great “wheat boom” of the 1890s, when three million European immi-
grants responded to the Canadian government’s promises of free land.

Ray, A. J. (2016). Illustrated history of canada's native people, fourth edition : I have lived here since the world began. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Created from ualberta on 2024-07-22 14:17:41.