Indian Treaties in Canada

C

Treaties During British-American Wars

When Britain fought against its 13 colonies in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and against the United States in the War of 1812 (1812-1815), both sides sought alliances with indigenous groups. During the wars, the British enjoyed considerable support from Indian nations. Sir William Johnson was close to Joseph Brant, chief of the Mohawk, an important nation in the Iroquois confederacy. The Mohawk stood by the British, while the Oneida and Tuscarora—Iroquois nations that had had close relations with New England missionaries—supported the Americans. Other Iroquois nations preferred neutrality, and these differences disrupted the confederacy.

The British lost the war and the 1783 Treaty of Paris drew the boundary between British North America and the new United States at the lower Great Lakes. Britain thus surrendered territory associated with Québec to the Americans and abandoned their allies in the region. The British set aside land north of the lower Great Lakes for United Empire Loyalists, including Loyalist Indians. The British signed treaties with the Mississauga nation to gain access to the lands for the Loyalists. In these treaties, negotiated by the rules established in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Mississauga surrendered land in return for payment.

III

Canadian Expansion and Dominion

After North America was divided into the United States and British North America, the British colonies experienced tremendous population growth. A flood of British immigrants fleeing the economic upheavals caused by the Industrial Revolution came to British North America between 1815 and the 1850s. In the new colony of Upper Canada (as Ontario was called from 1791 to 1841), the population increased tenfold, from 100,000 to nearly 1 million. To accommodate the resulting demand for land, imperial and local authorities made land acquisition a focus of new treaties.

Britain gained more land by negotiating new land treaties with the Mississauga in Upper Canada. In the Atlantic provinces (Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland) the British government forced Indian nations such as the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet off their lands without negotiating treaties. The government settled the Indians onto land reserves, small territories set aside for them, without compensation or assurances that the Indians would be protected or allowed to hunt and fish as they had in the past. The British also did not sign treaties in Lower Canada (as Québec was called from 1791 to 1841) because the few settlers who went there chose areas not occupied by Indians or other colonists.

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A

Pre-Confederation Treaties

Throughout British North America, two new features of treaty making developed: the local control of negotiations and the use of annuities (annual payments) instead of lump-sum payments. The British government became less involved in Indian relations in the 19th century, ceding control to colonial authorities in British North America. Crown representatives continued to negotiate treaties, but the colonists themselves increasingly dictated the terms. By the 1840s the local assembly and government of each colony could authorize treaty negotiations for peaceful access to Indian lands, even though control of Indian affairs officially remained with Britain until 1860. Colonial governments in the Atlantic provinces took land from Indians without treaties, using force rather than diplomacy. The local officials believed that the French had already won the land from the Indians earlier, through exploration and conquest, and that this control had passed to Britain in 1763. Since the governments in the colonial capitals were more in tune with settlers’ views and economic interests, they were less sympathetic to the Indians than the British government had been.

In Upper Canada government negotiators began to offer Indians payment for their land in a different form. Instead of the single payment introduced after the French and Indian War, the crown shifted to smaller annual payments, or annuities, to reduce the initial costs of treaty making. The annuities resembled the annual presents that Indians had received from European allies during earlier periods.

From 1814 to 1867 treaties were negotiated in three parts of British North America. The most numerous and influential were in Upper Canada, while small land transfers were also negotiated in what are today the provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia. In Upper Canada the colonial government continued to draft treaties like those presented to the Missassauga after both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, in which the Indians surrendered land in return for payment. After the War of 1812 the government negotiated additional land treaties with other Missassauga groups in the colony. Although no one land treaty had involved a very large parcel, most of the land suitable for agriculture in Upper Canada was covered by treaty by the middle of the 1830s.

Francis Bond Head, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, tried to introduce a unique component to the land treaties he negotiated with Ojibwa and Ottawa bands in southern Upper Canada in 1836. In these treaties the British government transferred remote lands on Manitoulin Island to the Indians in return for their land. Bond Head was convinced that the Indians were going to become extinct because he saw their communities declining. He thought, therefore, that it would be sensible to acquire their lands through treaties, and then transfer the Indians to Manitoulin Island to live out the rest of their days. However, missionary groups were concerned about the well-being of the Indian communities. These missionary groups succeeded in pressuring the imperial government to prevent the colonial government from relocating the Indians. But the treaties remained in force otherwise. By the 1840s all of what became southern Ontario was covered by treaty.

There were a few significant treaties in western British North America before Canada became a dominion in 1867. In 1817 a representative for the earl of Selkirk negotiated a treaty with Cree and Ojibwa bands at Red River. In return for an annual payment of tobacco to each group, the company secured land for the Red River Settlement in Rupert’s Land, a vast territory controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company. From 1850 to 1854 James Douglas, the governor of Vancouver’s Island (now Vancouver Island), negotiated with the Coast Salish nation to allow the Hudson’s Bay Company peaceful access to 14 small areas of land on the island.

In Canada West (as Ontario was called from 1841 to 1867), the government negotiated important treaties in 1850 with Ojibwa groups along Lake Huron and Lake Superior. William Benjamin Robinson, a crown representative, began negotiating with the Ojibwa after they resisted mining exploration on their land in the late 1840s. The resulting Robinson Huron and Robinson Superior treaties had three features that set a pattern for the future. Unlike earlier agreements, the Robinson treaties covered very large territories. The treaties also included a promise to create land reserves for the Indians, along with a commitment that the government would respect the right of the Ojibwa to continue hunting and fishing throughout the territory.

When the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Québec united in 1867 to form the Dominion of Canada, the new country acquired the existing treaties and the future responsibilities for relations with indigenous peoples. The arrangements for the Confederation of provinces stated that “Indians and lands reserved for the Indians” fell within the jurisdiction of the federal government rather than the provinces, ensuring that the national government would make future treaties. However, when British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, the provincial government retained control over land and resources within its borders, so consequently it was involved in negotiations with Indians in British Columbia.

B

Numbered Treaties

As the new nation expanded westward, the government negotiated land treaties that assured access to vast territories. For the first 50 years after 1867, the agreements Canada made with indigenous groups were known as the numbered treaties because they were designated simply by numbers. Treaties 1-7, concluded between 1871 and 1877, covered the agricultural lands in the western interior, from what was then Ontario’s western border to the foothills of the Canadian Rockies and from the United States boundary to midway up what are now the Prairie provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta). The later treaties 8-11 were northern treaties—covering the northeast corner of British Columbia (8), the northerly portions of the Prairie provinces (8 and 10), northern Ontario (9), and a portion of the Northwest Territories (11).

B

1

Treaties 1-7

In its first seven Indian treaties, the Canadian government followed Upper Canada’s tradition of negotiating before they settled the land, in accordance with the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Federal officials drew up treaties in response to threats from western groups of Ojibwa, Saulteaux, and Plains Cree that they would resist unauthorized use of their lands. These bands all indicated that they considered themselves owners of their land and that they expected Canada to negotiate treaties with them before sending settlers west. The Canadian government also learned from problems that had arisen in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s. The United States had engaged in a series of costly wars with Plains Indians, and Canadian officials knew that their young country could not afford a military conquest.

The Indian nations of the western interior—the Saulteaux, Plains Cree, Woods Cree, Assiniboine, Dakota (Sioux), Blackfoot, and Stoney—had their own motivations for signing treaties. They, too, were aware of how costly warfare, disease, and whiskey trading had been to their kin to the south. They knew from the American experience and the missionaries among them that large numbers of Canadians were soon expected to sweep into the prairies. The Indians were also aware that they were becoming weaker from warfare, disease, and the decline of the buffalo, the resource on which all Plains peoples depended. Those leaders who favored treaties with Canada—and not all within these nations wanted treaties—believed that a formal agreement with the Canadian government would protect them during heavy immigration and the decline of the buffalo economy. They described their choice as “taking the Queen’s hand,” by which they meant establishing a friendly relationship with the new people, a relationship that would allow Indians to survive the changes that were sure to come.

Treaties 1-7 provided European Canadians peaceful access to western lands. In return the Indians received reserves, compensation, and promises of future assistance. All the treaties described the territory they covered as lands “surrendered” to the crown, although the treaties granted the Indian nations the right to continue to hunt and fish throughout the lands. The Indian nations were to receive initial payments and annuities, and their leaders would receive additional annual payments and symbolic gifts such as treaty medals and chiefs’ suits or uniforms, the latter given every three years. The government also agreed to provide the Indians with schooling, farming tools, livestock, and seed. Treaty 6, which covered central Saskatchewan and Alberta, was unique in guaranteeing food assistance in times of famine and medical help in the form of a “medicine chest.”

The negotiations for treaties 1-7 were prolonged and difficult, mainly for two reasons. First, Indian negotiators were forceful in seeking better terms than Canada offered, especially in regard to the size of reserves and assistance with farming. Second, the Indians feared that signing treaties would mean coming under Canadian rule and giving up their practices of hunting, gathering, and fishing. During the negotiations, treaty commissioners reassured them with promises that the Canadian government would not interfere in their way of life. The government did not actually include the promises of noninterference in the text of the treaties.

The Canadian government and the Indians often had different understandings of the treaties. For the government, the treaties were contracts that provided title and political control over Indian nations and their territories. In contrast, Indian leaders saw the treaties as agreements to establish a relationship, overseen by their god, the Creator, in which Indians would share their territory with newcomers and both groups would live together cooperatively.

These differences were made worse in 1876 when Canada passed the Indian Act, which asserted government control and supervision over Indians throughout Canada. The act treated Indians as wards, or legally as children, and established the government as their guardian. As time went on and western Indian nations became weaker, the government increased its control and interference, prohibiting Indians from drinking or taking part in traditional ceremonies, such as the Sun Dance or the potlatch. Indians came to regard the Indian Act as a violation of the treaties.

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