Indian Treaties in Canada

I

Introduction

Indian Treaties in Canada, agreements between indigenous groups in Canada and the colonial authorities of France and Britain, and later the Canadian government that succeeded them. In the 1600s French settlers in North America negotiated the first treaties with Indians, as Canada’s indigenous peoples have historically been called. Britain signed treaties with Indians as it began to colonize North America and after it wrested control of what became Canada from France in the 18th century. After Canada confederated in 1867, the government of the new nation negotiated a flurry of Indian treaties.

The purposes of Indian treaties have varied. The first Indian treaties were intended to encourage trade and to establish peace and friendship, but later treaties were designed to acquire land controlled by Indian nations so that it could be given to non-Indian settlers. Over the past three centuries Indian treaties have had a number of effects: creating alliances between indigenous groups and European powers, ending periods of warfare between indigenous groups and Europeans, and permitting European settlers to obtain North American land peacefully.

In 1973 the Canadian government began to allow indigenous groups to file claims to land they had been promised by treaties or to land they had never surrendered by treaty. Indigenous groups can file two types of land claims: specific and comprehensive. Specific claims arise when the Canadian government has failed to meet existing treaty obligations. Those groups who never signed treaties can file comprehensive claims to enforce historical ownership of their land and to win compensation for land taken from them. When a comprehensive land claim is settled, the resulting agreement is a modern-day treaty.

II

Colonial Treaties

The French began to settle northern North America in the early 1600s. They were lured by the abundance of fish off the Atlantic Coast and by beavers whose pelts could be used to make hats. The earliest treaties between the French and the indigenous groups they encountered were trade agreements.

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A

Early Treaties

When the French came to North America, they needed to establish good relations with the Indians. Settlers in what was called New France wanted to fish, explore, trade for beaver furs, and spread Christianity. In order to do these activities, they had to rely heavily on the Indians with whom they made contact. Fishers needed peaceful conditions for fishing and land for drying their catch; fur traders depended on Indians to catch beavers and trade the pelts; explorers needed guides; and missionaries had to be tolerated at least by the Indian communities to whom they preached.

The early trade agreements between the French and the Algonquin, Huron, and Montagnais nations were not usually recorded in European documents. In each of these simple pacts, the two parties agreed to trade, and, in some cases, the Indians agreed to have some settlers in their communities. The French and their allies reaffirmed the treaties each year in gift-giving ceremonies. In the 1600s warfare broke out between the French and the Iroquois, a confederacy of five (later six) Indian nations who were enemies of the Algonquin, Huron, and Montagnais. In response, the French developed short-term agreements with their Indian allies to cover specific campaigns against the Iroquois. In 1701 the French and Iroquois signed the first important Canadian treaty, the Montréal Treaty, by which they agreed to peace and neutrality and ended about 90 years of sporadic warfare.

In the 1600s many British colonists began to settle the Atlantic Coast of North America, south of New France. They eventually established 13 colonies and sought land for agriculture, taking much of it from indigenous peoples by conquest. When they negotiated treaties with indigenous groups, the pacts were more complicated than those in New France. Two kinds of early British treaties existed, land treaties and treaties of friendship and mutual support. Land treaties often were simple contracts, or deeds, by which Indians conceded territory to the newcomers in return for a specified amount of money, paid in the form of trade goods. Unlike friendship agreements, which were often renewed by annual gifts to the Indians, the land treaties involved a onetime payment. Occasionally the Indians who made such pacts did not represent their communities. Conflict resulted when that happened, and the rest of the Indian community resisted the British settlement that followed. Friendship treaties allied Britain with powerful Indian nations and confederacies.

The best example of a friendship agreement was the Covenant Chain system, which the British inherited from the Dutch in the late 1600s in the colony of New York. The Covenant Chain was an alliance between Britain and the Iroquois confederacy, promising friendship in peace and support in times of conflict. The Iroquois wampum belt (belt made out of polished beads used for decoration or money) that memorialized this alliance was often compared to an iron or silver chain. The Iroquois had agreements with several Indian nations outside the confederacy, so the Covenant Chain at its most effective was an extensive system of alliances that covered most of the eastern half of North America.

Iroquois diplomats invested an enormous amount of skill and military muscle in maintaining the Covenant Chain system. In the early 1700s, when the system was most effective, the Iroquois had great influence with both the British and their own Indian allies. The Covenant Chain was at times unstable because Indian nations within the network of Covenant Chain alliances had differing interests and aims. Those who had links to nations outside the Covenant Chain system and who were trade partners and military allies of the French sometimes disregarded the Covenant and were hostile to the British. The Indians did not differ from the Europeans in inconsistent behavior; both used alliances as temporary conveniences that they violated when it suited their interests.

B

Treaties During French-British Conflicts

In the 17th century Britain and France began to battle for control of North America. The French had more support from the Indian nations, who considered them less of a threat to their land than the British. The battle for North America intensified in the 18th century and culminated in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). During the war, the British government established the Indian Department, which was responsible for relations with the Indians. The department’s northern superintendent, Sir William Johnson, improved relations with Indian nations of the interior, peoples traditionally allied with the French. The British crown gained their support by promising to protect their lands from the expansionist 13 colonies. Britain also improved relations with the Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia by means of the Treaty of Halifax (1752), a trade and friendship agreement. Still, many of the Indian nations perceived the land-hungry British colonies to be a greater threat than the trade-oriented French and sided with New France in the war.

In 1760, after British naval power had shattered France’s hold on North America, Johnson and the Indian Department turned to making new treaties with nations near Montréal known as the Praying Indians. These nations had been converted to Roman Catholicism by French missionaries in the 1600s and had become close allies of the French. The British were generally Protestant, but the pacts with the Praying Nations guaranteed that they would not interfere with the Indians’ way of life, including their religion.

Not all Indian nations entered into alliances with the British. The British aroused anger among nations in the interior when they discontinued the French practice of renewing treaty agreements yearly with gifts, choosing instead to finalize treaties with one lump-sum payment. After Britain defeated France in 1763, Ottawa chief Pontiac led an attack on British forts in the Great Lakes area to end British domination and to reinforce Indian autonomy. In response, British king George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to try to appease the Indians of the interior. The proclamation set aside land for the Indians west of the Appalachian Mountains and described this land as “lands reserved to [Indians] … as their Hunting Grounds.” The proclamation not only recognized Indian land ownership, but also required that treaties be negotiated before non-Indians could acquire the land. Only a representative of the British government could negotiate treaties, and the Indian community had to call a public meeting for the negotiation. The objective of this policy was to prevent dishonest deeds in which Indians sold lands to Europeans without the approval of their Indian community.

The Indian Department first used the proclamation in the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, by which the British obtained lands in the Ohio River valley region. The Stanwix treaty established a new frontier between Indian country and British colonies along the Ohio River, west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Iroquois who negotiated the Stanwix treaty benefited, as the British recognized their claim to land in the region. However, the agreement alienated some Indian nations, including the Shawnee, whose lands were sacrificed to colonists. In 1774 Britain passed the Québec Act, transferring control of the Ohio Valley lands from authorities in the 13 colonies, whose relations with the imperial government were strained, to Québec. The Québec Act angered the 13 colonies, but relieved some Indian nations who regarded Quebeckers as less of a threat to their lands.