Clearing the plains: disease, politics of starvation, and the loss of Indigenous life

Notes

Cover

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Title

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Copyright

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Contents

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Acknowledgements

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Introduction

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Canada’s indigenous population would rank sixty-third on the same index, the equivalent of Panama, Malaysia, or Belarus.2

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The primary goal of this study is to identify the roots of the current health disparity

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“culturalist preoccupations” of recent scholarship that have focused on the study of individual First Nations.6

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presents the Canadian northwest as a whole and considers the ebb and flow of different First Nations in the region from the early 1700s to the end of the nineteenth century.

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It was the alienation of First Nations from a viable economic base in the world system and the imposed environmental constraints of the reserve system that played a key role in the decline of their health in the late nineteenth century.

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The equivalent exchange of goods, flora, fauna, people, and microbes could only be repeated if there was an exchange of life forms between planets.10

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introduced Old World diseases were the fundamental determinants of the demographic history of indigenous Americans for up to 150 years after their initial exposure.11

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The importance of introduced infectious disease cannot be overstated in the history of indigenous America.

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epidemics of introduced contagious diseases swept through the region with regularity from the 1730s to the 1870s. The generational cycle ended when medical intervention curbed their impacts.

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the Cree and Ojibwa moved west as agents of the global economy.

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groups that acquired European trade goods, particularly firearms, expanded into areas inhabited by other groups,

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it was the Europeans who were dependent on local people for their survival.

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The issue of indigenous territorial occupation took on a new importance with the recognition of aboriginal rights in the Constitution Act of 1982. The longer a First Nation inhabited a territory, it was thought, the stronger its claim to the land.

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descriptions of western land showed that not the people but the European reporters were moving west.

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“discussion of political economy of the subarctic has essentially been shut down by ethnohistory.”28

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This book presents an interpretation of territorial realignment based on differential outcomes of eighteenth-century epidemics.

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must consider mortality from epidemic disease as a central determinant in the occupational history of the region.

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Water, a critical resource in the arid plains, was maintained through the purposeful non- exploitation of beaver,

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burden of disease was minuscule compared with the biological onslaught unleashed with the arrival of Europeans.

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tuberculosis was present, though probably rare, in the prehistoric population of the Canadian plains.

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these epidemics brought unprecedented death to groups such as the Sioux, Assiniboine, Anishinabe, and Cree in the boundary waters region and the Winnipeg River, Forks, and Interlake areas of Manitoba.

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Before the first European had even laid eyes on Alberta, the local native population had already experienced the greatest demographic shock of its history.

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several Cree groups were so depopulated that they ceased to exist as distinct entities in the aftermath of the epidemic.

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Epidemic mortality contributed to the ethnogenesis of new communities as survivors and incoming indigenous groups came together

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The period when Canadians dominated the Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers proved to be one of the most repugnant chapters of native–newcomer relations in Canada.

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an epidemic transition took place within a decade of the transfer. Widespread vaccination measures diminished the threat of smallpox, but almost immediately a new pathogen emerged to take its place as the primary cause of sickness and death—tuberculosis.

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the TB outbreak was defined by human rather than simply biological parameters.

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use food as a means to control the Indian population

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TB crisis among First Nations could have been significantly mitigated

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South Asian famines had more to do with the politics of food distribution than the scarcity of foodstuffs.34

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political economy was the “most appropriate” interpretive tool to balance biology, culture, historical events, and policies with the nature of the Canadian state and society.39

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officials quickly turned the food crisis into a means to control them

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1885, when the indigenous population of many parts of western Canada declined to its demographic nadir.

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Reserves became centres of incarceration as the infamous “pass system” was imposed

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By the 1890s, tuberculosis was increasingly seen as a hereditary disease by government officials.

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Chapter 1. Indigenous Health, Environment, and Disease before Europeans

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indigenous population of North America at contact with Europeans might have been 90 million people.1

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those seeking a precise quantitative resolution to what has been described as an “American Holocaust” on estimates of number of dwellings and number of people within them will probably never come to a satisfactory conclusion. Sadly, the limits of archaeology and the passage of centuries will keep us from ever going beyond informed speculation

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tuberculosis was endemic to the New World, present long before the arrival of Europeans.3

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North America was not a disease-free paradise

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The carnage at Crow Creek was but one manifestation of the hardship experienced across the northern hemisphere resulting from an intense climatic downturn that began in the mid-thirteenth century.7

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profound disruption and significant decline in their population as their way of life became unsustainable in the new and unforgiving climate regime.

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peak populations did not occur on the eve of the first introduced epidemics but might actually have occurred centuries earlier.

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“Climatic Optimum,” the “Medieval Warm Period,” the “Medieval Climatic Anomaly,” or the “Neo-Atlantic Climatic Episode.”

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revolutionized their food base as they added the horticultural triumvirate of corn, beans, and squash to their diets.11

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Cahokia, a city of as many as 20,000 people in 1100 CE.13 Its large population, surpassed only by that of Philadelphia at the end of the eighteenth century, and its huge earthen mounds, mark it as the apex of social organization and social stratification in prehistoric North America.14

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climate was not the limiting factor in the westward march of cultivation. Communities that continued to specialize in bison hunting did so because their material needs were more than adequately met.20

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large, sophisticated, “tribally” organized communities made up of as many as 1,000 individuals working communally to produce “an almost industrial level of resource exploitation.”

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large surpluses of food that were traded (often for corn and other crops) or stockpiled

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semi-sedentary, remaining in place for as long as six months at a time, alternating between river valley complexes and the open plains.22

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distance between winter and summer residences was probably not more than a walk of a few days.

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Before 1000 CE, only two distinct technological traditions were present on the Canadian plains. Archaeologists refer to them as the Besant and Avonlea phases.23

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The makers of Old Woman’s technology are acknowledged to be the ancestors of the historical Niitsitapi or Blackfoot people. Over time, they gradually replaced Avonlea in the region.25

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Hemispheric conditions changed so rapidly that they have been attributed to a single cataclysmic event, a huge volcanic explosion in 1259 CE.26

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In Greenland, rigid adherence to unsustainable European farming practices marked the beginning of the end for Norse settlement, while their indigenous neighbours shifted their subsistence strategies across the arctic, adapting to the harsh conditions and surviving in the long term.28

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horticultural villages of New York State and southern Quebec, came together after several generations of conflict and privation to form the League of the Iroquois,

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The most spectacular failure during this period of climatic decline was the disintegration of Cahokia.

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The abandonment of Woodland villages was so widespread that it triggered a wave of migration from Texas to Minnesota as whole societies turned west in search of refuge.

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has been described as “colonial expansion.”

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came north to Canada as refugees from the conflict along the Missouri near the turn of the fifteenth century.36

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“sudden, drastic cold spike during the little ice age,” probably caused by the cataclysmic explosion of Mount Kuwae in 1453–54, forced them to flee the region.38

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With their move to Saskatchewan, the conversion of Vickers Focus people from horticulturalists to big-game hunters was complete. In doing so, they took on a subsistence strategy shared by all other late-prehistoric societies on the Canadian prairies.

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A critical factor in the success of pedestrian bison hunting was the need to steer prey to their place of death without significantly disrupting the movement of the greater herd.42

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purposefully abstained from beaver hunting as a means of managing the amount of available water.

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beaver “were at the core of a profound ideological framework

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religious practices involving beaver medicine bundles continue to hold deep significance

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described nineteenth-century bison hunters as the “tallest in the world.”

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must have been incredibly fit, since running would have been integral to the maintenance of ties and trade.46

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Samuel Acoose, whose son was a world-famous runner, ran down a deer from Moose Mountain to the Qu’Appelle Valley

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Because TB is a disease triggered by poverty and malnutrition, those who relied on the herds were less prone to it

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Chapter 2. The Early Fur Trade: Territorial Dislocation and Disease

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“virgin soil epidemic” or VSE. Described as the single most significant event of a community’s demographic history,

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Mortality from initial infections of smallpox has been estimated to be as high as 70 percent or more. Survivors can be sick and debilitated for long periods.

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often there is no one with the physical ability to hunt or collect food. Those with the dubious good fortune of living through the initial sickness can slowly die from hunger.

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the mortality was horrific and the impact permanent.

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epidemic mortality as high as 90 to 95 percent made surviving indigenous communities “poverty cultures when compared with the richness of the past.”

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The reality of the young and strong, the warriors, hunters, collectors, and child bearers, in addition to political and religious leaders and keepers of tribal knowledge (maintained through oral traditions), perishing in a historical instant—in the span of weeks or a few months—surely had a fundamental impact on the social networks, institutions, and collective memories of entire First Nations.

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In some cases, like that of the arrival of the Mayflower, celebrated each November by hundreds of millions of Americans, disease preceded the arrival of settlers, clearing the way for what was considered to be a providential feast among the newcomers.6

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time and distance required for trans-Atlantic travel actually limited the spread of disease to the New World. During sea voyages lasting six weeks or more, infections aboard ship often ran their natural courses and expired before landfall.

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Low population densities in the new colonies coupled with the short life cycle of pathogens prevented most Old World infections, the most dangerous of which was smallpox, from becoming endemic or self-sustaining until the end of the eighteenth century, 150 years or more after their introduction to the continent.7

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As contact increased, the transportation routes that they controlled soon became effective vectors of disease.

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reducing the indigenous population of the region by half.8

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effect of epidemics was to expand the geographical sphere of the trade

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Without indigenous allies, the French headed west themselves, the first “voyageurs” leaving the colony in the spring of 1653.11

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from a disease perspective the tiny enclaves of Europeans (and their germs) had little impact

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“middleman trade,” aboriginal groups took on the role of brokers between fur producers thousands of kilometres from the sea and Europeans on the coast.

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The Cree and later the Chipewyan Dene pioneered the role, literally taking the modern world system to the interior of western Canada.

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European preference for worn clothing “a godsend to the aboriginal people, by affording them the use and exchange value for their beaver pelts.”

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Although scarcity and hunger were all too common, the small and dispersed population of the boreal forest limited the spread of disease

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Middlemen quickly developed specialized economic strategies to maximize benefits. Profits could be great, but they were not achieved without significant risks. Trade journeys were long and arduous, some lasting as long as five months. Drowning and death from exposure were common, and almost all middlemen experienced near starvation.21

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The consequences of failed trading expeditions could be just as dire for those left at home.

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Before introduced diseases began their decline, the Assiniboine were the most populous and widely dispersed First Nation in western Canada.

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In the wake of smallpox, fatalities among the Assiniboine led to abandonment of their territory east of the Red River.

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During the 1730s, as many as 1,000 Monsoni died of smallpox, leaving 500 or 600 survivors to continue their struggle against the Sioux.46

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the Monsoni would never return to their pre-epidemic position of power. The arrival of smallpox marked the beginning of the end for the Monsoni as a discrete population.

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notably other Anishinabe groups, quickly filled the vacuum, taking advantage of immunity conferred from previous exposure in the east.

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the Ricara nation was very large; it counted thirty-two populous villages, now depopulated and almost entirely destroyed by the smallpox, which broke out among them at three different times. A few families only, from each of the villages, escaped; these united and formed the two villages now here. …”

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Arikara experience of epidemic mortality, military pressure from Dakota-speaking groups (themselves displaced by disease and war), and decline was common among other plains horticultural people in the eighteenth century.60

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Spanish missions at San Antonio were entirely depopulated in the 1730s by epidemics and the dispersal of the survivors.63

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smallpox was becoming a childhood disease among the Pueblos, a sign of their long experience with it.

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The missions of the southwest were truly at the margins of European control. Beyond them lay the burgeoning territory of Comancheria, the Comanche Empire, a hybrid of indigenous political and economic forces literally built on the back of an Old World species, the horse.66

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access to equestrian stock started an unprecedented period of indigenous expansion across a vast region of the western United States.

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Horses revolutionized the indigenous way of life.

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speed afforded by equestrianism allowed smallpox to spread along the Numic horse distribution network into the western plains of Canada.

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persistence among many nations inhabiting the Plateau region of bison-hunting expeditions far to the east on the margins of the plains and in the territory of their traditional enemy the Niitsitapi. With the possible exception of the Lemhi or Salmon Eater Shoshone, the groups undertook these difficult and dangerous annual journeys without an apparent need to do so. As one nineteenth-century trader wrote, “Buffalo is the cause of all their misfortunes … although their lands abound in plenty of other animals; their hereditary attachment to the buffalo is so unconquerable, that it drives them every year to the plains, where they come into contact with the Blackfeet.”74 By maintaining their ties with the staple food of the plains, they retained their connection to a homeland lost, at least in part, to disease.

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The northerners had never seen horses, and perhaps the southerners had never seen guns.77 Both were about to undergo their first attack from smallpox.

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We attacked the tents, … but our war whoop instantly stopped; our eyes were appalled with terror; there was no one to fight with but the dead and the dying, each a mass of corruption.

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We had no belief that one man could give it to another, any more than a wounded man could give his wound to another.

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By 1740, disease was the primary factor in the wholesale redistribution of aboriginal populations of western Canada.

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Chapter 3. Early Competition and the Extension of Trade and Disease, 1740–82

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The demand for food created by the arrival of traders led to the commodification of bison as a commercial source of food. This new economic strategy took hold simultaneously with the decline of the middleman trade in furs. These innovations created the conditions for the spread of pandemic smallpox across North America in the early 1780s.1

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In keeping with its long- standing practice, the Hudson’s Bay Company continued to do essentially nothing—remaining at the coast and waiting for furs to be brought there. The French, in contrast, continued their steady march west.

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French officials were interested in the interior of the continent only as a source of furs.5

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To counter French advances, the HBC shifted from its passive stance on the coast.

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Cree and Assiniboine middlemen were critical to the success of the expanding trade.

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La Vérendrye was told that the plains Assiniboine understood “nothing of hunting beaver,” and it was hoped that the French could “teach them some sense”

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The Cree invasion of northern Alberta was part of a wider conflict between Cree and Dene groups over control of the middleman trade across the north.14

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corporate agenda for Hearne’s mission was to gain direct access to fur producers and cut the expense of reliance on middlemen.

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Cree soon became key producers in a new economy that developed as a consequence of the growing number of traders and the relative paucity of a dependable food supply in the parklands. The demand for food was largely met by the cornerstone of plains subsistence, the bison. Within years, meat became the principal item of exchange along the Saskatchewan River.

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Athabasca contained some of the richest fur territory on the continent, but it could not produce enough food to sustain trade in the region. Bison meat, the staple of a region far to the south, would have to be imported to the boreal forest for the trade to operate.

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The emergence of the ethnic identity known as the Plains Cree was a result of the shift from forest toward prairie.44

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By the end of the year, the plains were too dangerous for travel even by employees of the HBC, who had better relations with plains groups than their Canadian rivals.

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provisioners lit prairie fires to keep the herds away from the upper settlements to protect their source of income. The destruction of grass coupled with the late arrival of snow led to widespread hunger across the northern plains.

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disease among the Snakes undermined their centuries-long occupation of southwestern Alberta.60 Saukamappee told David Thompson that they were so reduced they were pushed back to the Missouri River and beyond.61 Within years, the once dreaded Snakes had retreated into the mountains, where they were attacked almost at will by their northern adversaries.62

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one in three members of Saukamappee’s Piikani community died in the outbreak,

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the Assiniboine were particularly hard hit. According to an HBC trader, “they are very few, if any left alive, … the Indians lying dead about the Barren Ground like rotten sheep, their tents left standing and the Wild Beasts devouring them.”

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Of twenty tents, only five men and “a few women and children” reportedly recovered from the disease.

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They would never fully recover from their losses. Anthropologist Dale Russell observed that the Assiniboine, “the most numerous group on the north-eastern plains and parklands in the eighteenth century,” are largely absent from discussions after the 1780s.65

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The epidemic largely depopulated the lower Saskatchewan valley. The Basquia Cree, who controlled the region, ceased to exist as a distinct cultural entity by the turn of the nineteenth century.67

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opened the lower Saskatchewan to immigrant groups closely attached to the fur trade, in particular the Muskego Cree and Anishinabe.68

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report that between the Pegogamaw and Assiniboine of the Saskatchewan River “not one in fifty have survived.”70 Like their Basquia relatives to the east, the Pegogamaw disappeared from the historical record soon after 1782.

NOTER_PAGE: (69 0.8060556464811784 . 0.12182203389830508)

Chapter 4. Despair and Death during the Fur Trade Wars, 1783–1821

NOTER_PAGE: (74 . 0.176136)

Basquia, Pegogamaw, and Cowanitow Cree simply ceased to exist as distinct groups.

NOTER_PAGE: (74 0.41314935064935066 . 0.6743697478991596)

Differential mortality altered the balance of power between rivals, leading to a succession of territorial realignments across the west.

NOTER_PAGE: (74 0.43668831168831174 . 0.4779411764705882)

Until 1810, the HBC had no more than one-seventh of the entire fur trade.

NOTER_PAGE: (74 0.8352272727272728 . 0.16596638655462184)

As newcomers inherited or took by force portions of the northern plains, they quickly denuded the region of game. The beaver were gone a generation after traders set up shop along the Saskatchewan River. Extirpation of the species and adoption of equestrianism marked the end of an ecological relationship between humans and their environment that was thousands of years old.

NOTER_PAGE: (75 0.2142857142857143 . 0.7846638655462185)

As winter temperatures plummeted, equestrian communities saw their herds perish. By then, horses were a necessity for hunting and security, and efforts to replenish them triggered a cycle of horse raiding and intertribal violence that continued until the 1870s.

NOTER_PAGE: (75 0.4813311688311689 . 0.20693277310924368)

longest and most severe drought of the past 500 years, and reduced water levels across the region spawned water-borne illnesses

NOTER_PAGE: (75 0.5689935064935066 . 0.17752100840336132)

dealt a deathblow to aboriginal plans to mount an armed resistance

NOTER_PAGE: (75 0.726461038961039 . 0.6607142857142857)

Feeding the northern trade was a lucrative economic pursuit and a major factor in the ethnogenesis of the Plains Cree lifestyle.9

NOTER_PAGE: (76 0.31412337662337664 . 0.27205882352941174)

Plains Cree that emerged were not the same people as those who had inhabited the region prior to the epidemic. Ethnohistorian Charles Bishop warned that blanket terms such as “Cree” and “Ojibwa” have “created a false impression of cultural homogeneity

NOTER_PAGE: (76 0.5357142857142857 . 0.42962184873949577)

they brought only wolf pelts and other low-value furs even though their country abounded in beavers.

NOTER_PAGE: (77 0.502435064935065 . 0.2741596638655462)

A’aninin refusal to commercially exploit beaver, the prime item of exchange at the posts, was a vestige of the centuries-old proscription on hunting the species that was a cornerstone of successful adaptation to life on the arid grasslands.

NOTER_PAGE: (77 0.5965909090909092 . 0.35714285714285715)

As Cree newcomers moved up the Saskatchewan in the 1780s, they capitalized on the advantage conferred by firearms

NOTER_PAGE: (77 0.6931818181818182 . 0.16596638655462184)

the A’aninin did not counterattack; instead, they headed south and were not seen for two years.22

NOTER_PAGE: (78 0.32873376623376627 . 0.4432773109243697)

Once more the A’aninin did not seek vengeance since they were vastly outgunned. Rather, they and their Siksika allies took revenge on the traders who had armed the aggressors

NOTER_PAGE: (78 0.47970779220779225 . 0.1292016806722689)

The Canadian advantage in the trade was a steady flow of alcohol from Montreal.

NOTER_PAGE: (79 0.17532467532467533 . 0.26260504201680673)

The ceremonial consumption of spirits was a feature of trade protocol,

NOTER_PAGE: (79 0.19642857142857145 . 0.2027310924369748)

unchecked competition among Canadian enterprises had brought social pathologies, particularly alcoholism and violence, to their peak.

NOTER_PAGE: (79 0.6777597402597403 . 0.20903361344537813)

At Pembina, rum was a part of every transaction, if not every encounter, with aboriginal producers.32

NOTER_PAGE: (79 0.7735389610389611 . 0.5798319327731092)

too much for some individuals to bear. Suicide, according to John Tanner, was frequent.34

NOTER_PAGE: (80 0.09902597402597403 . 0.3792016806722689)

the amount of double-strength rum imported from Canada swelled to over 20,000 gallons per year.

NOTER_PAGE: (80 0.25243506493506496 . 0.11869747899159663)

The most numerous of those who moved west to trap were the Anishinabe. With their long connection to the trade and their home territory in the east depleted of fur bearers, they were quick to take advantage of the new opportunity. By the 1790s, they had emerged as an identifiable new group, the Western Ojibwa or Saulteaux.37 Armed with new steel traps and using castoreum as bait,

NOTER_PAGE: (80 0.5430194805194806 . 0.29831932773109243)

As the Anishinabe expanded their trapping grounds, they displaced local groups, often with a combination of psychological and physical intimidation. Even their allies were intimidated by them.39

NOTER_PAGE: (80 0.7857142857142858 . 0.1638655462184874)

Anishinabe trappers brought their powerful religious customs with them

NOTER_PAGE: (81 0.10957792207792208 . 0.30462184873949577)

Canadian traders encouraged the violent expansion of the Anishinabe into new territory to augment the production of fur.42

NOTER_PAGE: (81 0.20373376623376624 . 0.15441176470588236)

conflict with the Dakota,

NOTER_PAGE: (81 0.32896890343698854 . 0.1260593220338983)

During the 1790s, the area along the Red River was largely unoccupied and essentially a war zone.

NOTER_PAGE: (81 0.35924713584288054 . 0.2129237288135593)

explosion in the number of trading establishments along the Assiniboine, which grew from nine to twenty- nine between 1793 and 1795.49

NOTER_PAGE: (81 0.8248772504091654 . 0.3739406779661017)

Although not as numerous as the Saulteaux, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) became important fur harvesters in the years after the smallpox epidemic.

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single-minded practices of Iroquois trappers made them notorious. As commercial trappers, they were highly mobile, prepared to go anywhere to get beavers and move on when they were depleted.52 As Tomison put it, they “leave nothing wherever they come.”

NOTER_PAGE: (82 0.23076923076923078 . 0.2266949152542373)

Overtrapping by the newcomers was encouraged by the avarice of traders rather than ignorance of the impact on the beaver population.

NOTER_PAGE: (82 0.33469721767594107 . 0.263771186440678)

Resentment over unsustainable harvesting by the Iroquois occasionally exploded into violence.

NOTER_PAGE: (82 0.38461538461538464 . 0.1684322033898305)

Iroquois continued to make enemies over the continental divide.

NOTER_PAGE: (82 0.5016366612111293 . 0.1260593220338983)

The Iroquois, almost exclusively in the employ of Canadian firms, were loathed by the HBC. Angus Shaw, an experienced HBC trader, compared them to the locusts of Egypt,

NOTER_PAGE: (82 0.5720130932896891 . 0.1673728813559322)

one producer along the Swan River was convinced that the plague had been sent by the creator as a punishment for overhunting.60

NOTER_PAGE: (82 0.8600654664484452 . 0.1292372881355932)

The disease was clearly zoonotic: that is, it affected human beings as well as animals. The sickness spread to Tanner’s Anishinabe community, killing many; the pain drove Tanner to madness and the brink of suicide.62 The disease has been tentatively identified as a typhoidal variety of tularaemia,63

NOTER_PAGE: (83 0.1513911620294599 . 0.1652542372881356)

sexually transmitted diseases were spreading among plains communities,

NOTER_PAGE: (83 0.7716857610474632 . 0.5434322033898306)

Among the Fort Vermilion Cree, venereal disease seemed to be the principal cause of death.71

NOTER_PAGE: (83 0.8780687397708675 . 0.715042372881356)

Canadian traders, generally the worst purveyors of spirits, also abused their aboriginal clients and employees.75

NOTER_PAGE: (84 0.37970540098199673 . 0.1684322033898305)

Some groups, such as the Chipewyan Dene, resisted the use of alcohol, and when chemical dependency was insufficient to get what they wanted Canadian traders turned to assault, murder, and kidnapping.

NOTER_PAGE: (84 0.5081833060556465 . 0.3824152542372881)

jeopardized their traditional subsistence cycle in a precarious environment.

NOTER_PAGE: (84 0.6014729950900164 . 0.534957627118644)

routinely took women from their families to ensure payment of debts and sold them to company employees

NOTER_PAGE: (84 0.6980360065466449 . 0.5625)

Canadian trade practices, unfettered by legality or morality, initially met with great success.

NOTER_PAGE: (84 0.8175122749590835 . 0.4735169491525424)

That “authority” in the Athabasca included a slave traffic in women.80

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.1530278232405892 . 0.3177966101694915)

decline in trade was the result of competition between the two Canadian concerns and, “partly, by the death of many Natives.”

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.31014729950900166 . 0.4650423728813559)

by 1807, trade had “almost totally abolishe[d] every humane sentiment in both Christian and Indian breast.”

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.35924713584288054 . 0.260593220338983)

Chipewyan quit the trade in large numbers

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.45253682487725044 . 0.4300847457627119)

barred XY Company traders from their territory

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.5220949263502456 . 0.1260593220338983)

competition ignited several intertribal wars.

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.5499181669394435 . 0.1271186440677966)

As the frenzy for furs extended to marginal production areas in the north, local populations were not only threatened by both European and aboriginal aggression but also displaced from their seasonal subsistence cycles,

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.6170212765957447 . 0.2108050847457627)

Iroquois continued to overtrap along the river, eventually displacing the Dunneza from the region, forcing them north into the territory of less powerful groups.86

NOTER_PAGE: (85 0.8584288052373159 . 0.2913135593220339)

Canada Jurisdiction Act, though a flawed piece of legislation, was the first attempt to impose legal authority in the far northwest.92

NOTER_PAGE: (86 0.5253682487725041 . 0.1281779661016949)

acknowledgement by British authorities that the trade had gotten out of control.

NOTER_PAGE: (86 0.5810147299509002 . 0.15783898305084745)

Intimidation of HBC employees continued for at least a decade after the merger, severely curtailing English fur returns from the Athabasca.96

NOTER_PAGE: (87 0.2463175122749591 . 0.1906779661016949)

attributed the relative scarcity of women among the Dene tha (Slavey) along the Mackenzie River to “the custom they have of often destroying the female children when just born.”

NOTER_PAGE: (87 0.4435351882160393 . 0.3040254237288136)

The Dene tha were under terrible pressure at this time. In addition to years of unrelenting disease among humans, there was disease among animals, and the Dene tha were dislocated by the Chipewyan

NOTER_PAGE: (87 0.5679214402618659 . 0.1663135593220339)

Hunger was a constant threat to all inhabitants of the far north.

NOTER_PAGE: (87 0.8363338788870704 . 0.15889830508474576)

The winter of 1810–11 was particularly horrible. At the Mackenzie River Post, three “of four Christians” died of starvation.

NOTER_PAGE: (88 0.22504091653027825 . 0.1694915254237288)

Instances of cannibalism were reported across the north;

NOTER_PAGE: (88 0.27577741407528644 . 0.1472457627118644)

During the winter of 1812, indigenous producers along the Liard River turned on the traders,

NOTER_PAGE: (88 0.4549918166939444 . 0.1694915254237288)

“Athabasca itself is dwindling down to nothing.”

NOTER_PAGE: (88 0.5065466448445172 . 0.2754237288135593)

Iroquois had trapped the region out,

NOTER_PAGE: (88 0.5368248772504092 . 0.3432203389830508)

Years of overhunting and abuse ruined the country that had been opened only decades before.

NOTER_PAGE: (88 0.6644844517184944 . 0.5677966101694916)

emphasis on economy and efficiency led to a serious, if temporary, labour crisis.

NOTER_PAGE: (89 0.10474631751227496 . 0.211864406779661)

1816, “the year without a summer,” was one of the worst weather years in the historical record,117

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widespread starvation and death to the subarctic. In Athabasca, almost one- fifth of the HBC contingent that had “invaded” the district died of hunger

NOTER_PAGE: (89 0.5008183306055647 . 0.1260593220338983)

climatic crisis might well have sparked the confrontation.

NOTER_PAGE: (89 0.7414075286415712 . 0.163135593220339)

Competition for unreliable resources triggered several violent outbreaks among First Nations.

NOTER_PAGE: (89 0.8654676258992806 . 0.5065176908752328)

Aboriginal producers in the far north abandoned their Canadian tormentors in large numbers, preferring the “less tyrannical” trade practices of the HBC.125 The shift of Athabasca communities to the English was an important factor in the outcome of the fur trade war.

NOTER_PAGE: (90 0.6107913669064748 . 0.19646182495344505)

simultaneous outbreak of whooping cough and measles

NOTER_PAGE: (90 0.7467625899280576 . 0.2886405959031657)

measles infection was particularly lethal to aboriginal populations. Because it had not been seen inland for seventy years, it acted as a virgin soil epidemic,

NOTER_PAGE: (90 0.8064748201438849 . 0.3715083798882682)

exacerbated in populations suffering from malnutrition.

NOTER_PAGE: (90 0.8798561151079137 . 0.24860335195530725)

“one fifth of the population of the country is said to have been destroyed all the way from Lac la Pluie to Athabasca.”

NOTER_PAGE: (91 0.16762589928057553 . 0.3547486033519553)

almost one-third of the Niitsitapi trading at Fort Edmonton and approximately one-fifth of the Plains Cree died.

NOTER_PAGE: (91 0.24388489208633093 . 0.5493482309124768)

Mortality among plains people ranged from 40 to 65 percent.

NOTER_PAGE: (91 0.32014388489208634 . 0.30726256983240224)

Possibly one in four of all Assiniboine people died.130

NOTER_PAGE: (91 0.37553956834532376 . 0.28957169459962756)

Canadian traders started a rumour that the HBC had deliberately infected people

NOTER_PAGE: (91 0.7158273381294964 . 0.7942271880819367)

Muskego Cree at Cumberland House, were “totally incapacitated from hunting by sickness.”

NOTER_PAGE: (91 0.8158273381294964 . 0.17318435754189945)

“the whole of their caution in approaching an animal being rendered abortive by a single cough.”

NOTER_PAGE: (92 0.12158273381294964 . 0.6955307262569832)

customary law that prohibited hunting during mourning.

NOTER_PAGE: (92 0.17841726618705037 . 0.2756052141527002)

among the Athabasca Chipewyan, the diseases “carried away whole bands, and they are now dispersing in all directions,

NOTER_PAGE: (92 0.4136690647482014 . 0.2048417132216015)

Chapter 5. Expansion of Settlement and Erosion of Health during the HBC Monopoly, 1821–69

NOTER_PAGE: (94 . 0.176136)

END OF THE FUR TRADE WARS IN 1821

NOTER_PAGE: (94 0.3489208633093525 . 0.2430167597765363)

maximum returns with minimum investments.1

NOTER_PAGE: (94 0.48345323741007196 . 0.3854748603351955)

region-wide labour crisis as the majority of fur trade workers found themselves without employment.4

NOTER_PAGE: (94 0.6244604316546762 . 0.36778398510242083)

HBC also worked to prevent contagious diseases, especially smallpox, with the widespread distribution of vaccine.

NOTER_PAGE: (94 0.702158273381295 . 0.13687150837988826)

strained the viability of bison herds, a resource once thought to be almost limitless.

NOTER_PAGE: (95 0.0985611510791367 . 0.13221601489757914)

Relentless microbial attacks brought some indigenous communities to the brink of collapse. Others were spared by medical intervention that came with their commercial relationships with British traders, equipped with medicines that made the difference between life and death. During the HBC monopoly, differential demographic outcomes of disease episodes among plains groups shaped the pattern of territorial occupancy that largely remains to this day.

NOTER_PAGE: (95 0.2956834532374101 . 0.12849162011173185)

ascendancy of equestrian chase hunting over less disruptive harvesting practices such as pounding

NOTER_PAGE: (95 0.5719424460431655 . 0.12756052141527002)

disease reportedly killed four-fifths of the population along the Columbia River.9

NOTER_PAGE: (95 0.7330935251798562 . 0.4851024208566108)

smallpox did not become widespread in British territory. At Red River, the HBC vaccinated large numbers of people,

NOTER_PAGE: (95 0.7712230215827338 . 0.27001862197392923)

The depletion of large game, along with mortality from epidemic disease and military conflict, contributed to territorial abandonment, which opened the region for settlement by the Anishinabe.

NOTER_PAGE: (96 0.5021582733812949 . 0.21973929236499068)

long relationship with European traders had made them “quite dependent, their country being stripped of its most valuable furs.”

NOTER_PAGE: (96 0.6151079136690648 . 0.11731843575418995)

HBC stopped granting its retirees land in the colony to control what it considered the wrong kind of growth— those who depended on corporate assistance or would not commit themselves fully to an agrarian lifestyle.

NOTER_PAGE: (97 0.5 . 0.3957169459962756)

company imposed what was essentially a prohibition on alcohol

NOTER_PAGE: (97 0.7366906474820144 . 0.12383612662942271)

policy was unpopular with fur producers:

NOTER_PAGE: (97 0.8676258992805755 . 0.2783985102420857)

Game conservation was another issue that the company took on, imposing limits and even banning the harvest of certain species in depleted regions.

NOTER_PAGE: (98 0.2669064748201439 . 0.16945996275605213)

Only where fur production could be realistically curtailed and the monopoly secured were controls placed

NOTER_PAGE: (98 0.5316546762589928 . 0.16387337057728119)

closure of posts was intended to nurture game, but the result was often hardship for the local indigenous population.

NOTER_PAGE: (98 0.6647482014388489 . 0.29608938547486036)

competition from free traders and American interests. Aboriginal producers were encouraged to trap areas out, leaving a fur- denuded buffer along the margins of HBC territory.26

NOTER_PAGE: (98 0.8115107913669065 . 0.4301675977653631)

ordered “to hunt as bare as possible all the Country South of the Columbia and West of the Mountains.”

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.15539568345323743 . 0.3240223463687151)

Dunneza of the Peace River area, protested the closure of their fort by turning on the traders.

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.2316546762589928 . 0.31191806331471134)

Anishinabe increasingly became important participants in the cycle of warfare as allies of the Cree in opposition to the Niitsitapi and the Mandan along the Missouri.31

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.4302158273381295 . 0.4441340782122905)

Plains Cree recovered from their losses during the 1820s largely by migrating from the woodlands to the prairie and bison.32

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.5050359712230216 . 0.21973929236499068)

company’s new policy mandated that trappers trade at only one post,

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.7697841726618705 . 0.25232774674115455)

HBC censuses were part of a strategy to set production quotas appropriate to the sizes of post populations.35

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.8143884892086332 . 0.4450651769087523)

Corporate authorities strongly opposed the migration of displaced aboriginal producers

NOTER_PAGE: (99 0.839568345323741 . 0.7793296089385475)

producers who “trespassed” from other districts often hunted game illegally.39

NOTER_PAGE: (100 0.3539568345323741 . 0.22346368715083798)

Chipewyan and Inuit groups exchanged furs before trading with Europeans at Churchill to maximize their returns.40

NOTER_PAGE: (100 0.4079136690647482 . 0.13314711359404097)

Cree simply ignored appeals for conservation.41

NOTER_PAGE: (100 0.4287769784172662 . 0.5270018621973929)

By 1830, 20 percent were country born. Thirty years later half of HBC employees were born in the northwest. Officers, many of them still from Great Britain, found them unmanageable.43

NOTER_PAGE: (100 0.6726618705035972 . 0.24394785847299813)

ever-increasing demand for meat was met by a burgeoning Métis- controlled hunting economy

NOTER_PAGE: (100 0.8035971223021583 . 0.18435754189944134)

Demand for hides in the global market outstripped the expanding but essentially local market for meat.

NOTER_PAGE: (101 0.23884892086330936 . 0.16666666666666666)

Meeting the world demand destroyed the provisioning economy, leaving Red River short of meat.

NOTER_PAGE: (101 0.3258992805755396 . 0.4264432029795158)

shift from a European to a largely indigenous workforce after the merger also brought significant changes to the disease ecology

NOTER_PAGE: (101 0.5791366906474821 . 0.21508379888268156)

With increasing frequency, contagious diseases spread along the transportation routes of the interior.

NOTER_PAGE: (101 0.6741007194244605 . 0.5111731843575419)

population of Red River served to maintain infections for extended periods,

NOTER_PAGE: (101 0.7143884892086331 . 0.12849162011173185)

Completion of the Erie Canal in the mid-1820s turned a trickle of immigrants to the American midwest into a flood.

NOTER_PAGE: (101 0.8251798561151079 . 0.3715083798882682)

introduction of steam-powered vessels during the period served to bring greater numbers of people and their germs with increased speed

NOTER_PAGE: (102 0.12949640287769784 . 0.23649906890130354)

In 1831, smallpox swept across the central American plains, killing half of the Pawnee nation.60

NOTER_PAGE: (102 0.6913669064748201 . 0.17132216014897578)

US government implemented a smallpox prevention program that conferred immunity to over 3,000 inhabitants of the lower Missouri River. Unfortunately for the communities upstream, the physicians could not complete their work during the summer of 1832. They asked to be sent to the unvaccinated region the following year but were refused. Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Assiniboine, Cree, and Niitsitapi in US territory were not vaccinated. Those nations were severely debilitated when smallpox broke out along the Missouri in 1837.

NOTER_PAGE: (102 0.7431654676258993 . 0.25139664804469275)

Sioux bands, through vaccination or avoidance, were spared the mortality endured by their neighbours, and their better health facilitated their subsequent territorial expansion.61

NOTER_PAGE: (103 0.6676258992805756 . 0.1340782122905028)

The epidemic of 1837–38 killed an estimated 17,000 people and turned the region into “one great graveyard.”

NOTER_PAGE: (103 0.737410071942446 . 0.16759776536312848)

For the Mandan, the death blow came less than two years later. Weakened by mortality estimated as high as 90 percent,63 the villages were overrun by the Sioux in January 1839.

NOTER_PAGE: (103 0.7949640287769785 . 0.22811918063314712)

disease ravaged the Assiniboine and Niitsitapi,

NOTER_PAGE: (104 0.10287769784172662 . 0.21880819366852886)

estimated mortality among the two groups as high as 75 percent.65 Evidence of the carnage was still visible a decade later. In 1848, Paul Kane saw “[t]he bones of a whole camp of Indians, who were carried off by that fatal scourge of their race, the small-pox, … bleaching on the plains.”66

NOTER_PAGE: (104 0.1762589928057554 . 0.22253258845437615)

epidemic did not sweep through HBC territory unchecked, for the company delivered medical and other types of assistance

NOTER_PAGE: (104 0.30719424460431655 . 0.22625698324022347)

more than a sense of altruism; traders offered assistance to women, the sick, and the elderly so that able-bodied men could continue the commercial hunt.

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Dr. William Todd, known as ‘Picotte’ because of his own disfigurement from smallpox, was largely responsible for stopping the epidemic in its tracks through extensive vaccination.68

NOTER_PAGE: (104 0.4733812949640288 . 0.4329608938547486)

Ethnic boundaries were blurred as Cree, Saulteaux, and Assiniboine survivors joined together.69

NOTER_PAGE: (104 0.5683453237410072 . 0.3333333333333333)

role of the epidemic in the decline of the Assiniboine, once ubiquitous in the northwest. According to Chief Dan Kennedy, the group was “literally wiped out.”

NOTER_PAGE: (105 0.2525667351129363 . 0.4800708591674048)

as the HBC sought to end the most virulent disease of the time with some success, its employees infected communities with influenza and other diseases, which kept mortality rates high.

NOTER_PAGE: (106 0.8501026694045174 . 0.4286979627989371)

hasty transfer of troops spread infection throughout the region.

NOTER_PAGE: (109 0.5366187542778919 . 0.566873339238264)

Aboriginal mortality in northern Manitoba was so severe that traditional mourning practices were abandoned.106

NOTER_PAGE: (109 0.6646132785763176 . 0.4030115146147033)

By 1862, the bison herds had disappeared from Red River altogether, and hunters had to travel farther west onto the plains to find them.140

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The Canadian government pledged financial assistance for the colony, but no money was sent to Red River. Instead, the dominion concentrated its relief effort on construction of the road linking the community with Lake Superior. Canada’s response to the agricultural crisis served as the pretext for its annexation of Rupert’s Land.

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Chapter 6. Canada, the Northwest, and the Treaty Period, 1869–76

NOTER_PAGE: (116 . 0.176136)

Within a decade, the bison would be gone,

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As a result of the epidemic, Plains Cree along the North Saskatchewan River insisted on a Treaty 6 clause requiring the dominion government to provide a “medicine chest” for the reserve population. The true meaning of that amendment remains disputed.

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Belief that the disease was spread purposefully was common during the early settlement period.

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Hugh Dempsey has shown that the legend of the smallpox blanket is apocryphal, in fact “pure fiction,” while acknowledging that the story of the intentional spread of disease as a tool of genocide “has gained a life of its own and will continue to be told and retold as historical fact.”

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Mortality among the Tsuu T’ina might have been much greater than the official report indicated; from an estimated pre-epidemic population of several thousand, only 300 to 400 remained alive.15

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The communities of the disputed territory west of the forks of the Saskatchewan suffered the full brunt of the epidemic. Hostilities on the western plains and the months-long breakdown in communications between the west and Red River prevented vaccine from reaching the sufferers.34

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they were “at times very insolent; they went about armed to the teeth, and were ready for any excuse to commit violence. This was a white man’s disease, and they hated the whites.”

NOTER_PAGE: (124 0.44490075290896647 . 0.1204605845881311)

They believed that only Europeans could cure the disease that they had introduced to the country and that their own medicine men were powerless in confronting the plague.

NOTER_PAGE: (124 0.7488021902806297 . 0.6439326837909655)

the disease was much worse in areas under the ministry of Catholics.

NOTER_PAGE: (126 0.34154688569472963 . 0.4092116917626218)

Catholics, in contrast, dealt with the suffering by bringing their communities together.

NOTER_PAGE: (126 0.621492128678987 . 0.16651904340124005)

Some Catholics vaccinated their people, but according to Butler the serum bought at Fort Benton and dispensed at the height of the epidemic at St. Albert was “of a spurious description.”

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the negotiation of, or at least the promise of, a treaty in the Saskatchewan district was “essential to the peace, if not the actual retention[,] of the country.”

NOTER_PAGE: (132 0.8343600273785079 . 0.17094774136403898)

The arrival of so many immigrants forced the completion of Treaty 1 in Manitoba. The government was only willing to negotiate treaties according to its own timetable based on external and often short-term needs rather than concern for the long-term well-being of the Indians.104

NOTER_PAGE: (133 0.19788732394366199 . 0.22333637192342753)

The early 1870s saw significant changes to the fur trade economy that for decades had been dominated by the HBC. Having sold its charter, the company no longer felt responsible for the physical well- being of its suppliers.

NOTER_PAGE: (133 0.5169014084507042 . 0.30355515041020964)

The downside of the new era, according to Grant, would be extirpation of the indigenous population.111 The main cause would be not only “scrofula and epidemics” but also the invasion of southern traders, whose chief commodity was “rum in name, but in reality a compound of tobacco, vitriol, bluestone and water.”

NOTER_PAGE: (134 0.1295774647887324 . 0.5651777575205105)

Grant’s gruesome prediction might well have come true were it not for the arrival of the North- West Mounted Police in the southwest in the fall of 1874.113

NOTER_PAGE: (134 0.2823943661971831 . 0.6526891522333637)

perceived threat posed to First Nations of uniformed Canadians and Americans working together.

NOTER_PAGE: (134 0.6450704225352113 . 0.5651777575205105)

The situation was resolved by late summer 1874 with arrival of the police and conclusion of the Qu’Appelle Treaty in September.120 At the ceremony, dominion officials were lambasted for allowing surveys to be conducted without the surrender of aboriginal title.121 Chief Pasqua articulated the frustration of the Indians succinctly. Pointing to the HBC’s McDonald, the chief was reported to have said that “You told me you had sold the land for so much money—£300,000. We want that money.”

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It was in an atmosphere increasingly marked by privation, resignation, and dread that the dominion treaty party met with the First Nations of the northern plains in the late summer of 1876.

NOTER_PAGE: (137 0.2605633802816902 . 0.1659070191431176)

the bison economy was all but over,

NOTER_PAGE: (137 0.32816901408450705 . 0.43482224247948953)

relative power of the Plains Cree in 1876.

NOTER_PAGE: (137 0.4042253521126761 . 0.20601640838650864)

Plains Cree still posed a serious military threat to the small number of Europeans who had ventured onto the western prairie.

NOTER_PAGE: (137 0.45140845070422536 . 0.5287146763901549)

study of Treaty 6 acknowledged that the threat of armed conflict and pressure for economic development were the main motivations for dominion negotiators.139

NOTER_PAGE: (137 0.504225352112676 . 0.6763901549680947)

Hunger contributed to the urgency of the treaty.

NOTER_PAGE: (138 0.5507042253521127 . 0.23427529626253418)

To Morris, a guarantee of food aid during the transitional period was too extravagant and would result in idleness

NOTER_PAGE: (138 0.5866197183098592 . 0.17502278942570648)

if a great blow comes on the Indians, they would not be allowed to die like dogs.”

NOTER_PAGE: (138 0.7190140845070423 . 0.740200546946217)

Tee-Tee-Quay-Say requested “That we be supplied with medicines free of cost.” Morris later responded that “A medicine chest will be kept at the house of each Indian Agent, in case of sickness amongst you.”

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miserly interpretation of the terms of the treaty in the years following extirpation of the bison and marginalization from the new agricultural economy on the plains.

NOTER_PAGE: (139 0.3943661971830986 . 0.8076572470373746)

Chapter 7. Treaties, Famine, and Epidemic Transition on the Plains, 1877–82

NOTER_PAGE: (140 . 0.176136)

With few exceptions, agreements between the crown and First Nations were reached from positions of mutual strength.

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single greatest environmental catastrophe to strike human populations on the plains: disappearance of bison in the wild.

NOTER_PAGE: (140 0.5091549295774648 . 0.3226982680036463)

region-wide famine that ensued and the inability of authorities to provide adequate food relief sparked the widespread emergence of tuberculosis

NOTER_PAGE: (140 0.7830985915492958 . 0.1276207839562443)

tailored their response to the famine to further their own agenda of development in the west by subjugating the malnourished and increasingly sick indigenous population.

NOTER_PAGE: (140 0.8521126760563381 . 0.2105742935278031)

By the early 1880s, tuberculosis, relatively infrequent on the plains prior to the treaty period, was reported to be the main killer of reserve populations.4

NOTER_PAGE: (141 0.10211267605633803 . 0.16773017319963537)

in the mid-nineteenth century, peoples on the plains were perhaps the tallest and best-nourished population in the world.9

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Years of hunger and despair that coincided with extermination of the bison and relocation of groups to reserves, exacerbated by inadequate food aid from the dominion government, created ecological conditions in which the disease exploded.12

NOTER_PAGE: (142 0.10070422535211268 . 0.1276207839562443)

By the early 1870s, the link between privation and disease among the indigenous peoples of the plains was widely recognized.

NOTER_PAGE: (142 0.5190140845070422 . 0.12853236098450319)

described scrofula, glandular tuberculosis, as “the consequence of insufficient nourishment,

NOTER_PAGE: (142 0.7133802816901409 . 0.12397447584320875)

The ecological significance of the introduction of cattle cannot be overstated.

NOTER_PAGE: (143 0.5387323943661972 . 0.487693710118505)

between 6 and 10 million cattle and 1 million horses were driven north from Texas

NOTER_PAGE: (143 0.5838028169014085 . 0.5660893345487693)

With them came diseases such as anthrax, Texas tick fever, brucellosis, and, significantly, bovine tuberculosis.

NOTER_PAGE: (143 0.6612676056338028 . 0.24247948951686418)

Rather than being a panacea for the hungry, domestic cattle almost certainly spread bovine tuberculosis through the hungry and immune-compromised population.32

NOTER_PAGE: (144 0.3316901408450704 . 0.35004557885141296)

from the manner of dividing the beef it is possible, and probable, that one hundred persons may become inoculated by a single animal.”

NOTER_PAGE: (144 0.47253521126760567 . 0.18413855970829535)

very strong El Niño activity in 1877 and 1878

NOTER_PAGE: (145 0.6725352112676056 . 0.14767547857793983)

Because there was no snow accumulation, 1877–78 was known as the “black winter.”36 Prairie fires resulting from the winter drought spread over much of the western plains in what became Alberta and Saskatchewan and destroyed large tracts of pasture.

NOTER_PAGE: (145 0.7267605633802817 . 0.5888787602552416)

The official response to the medical emergency in the largely unorganized territory of Keewatin was mired in controversy over the financial responsibility of the relief effort.45

NOTER_PAGE: (146 0.7352112676056338 . 0.5296262534184139)

Prime Minister’s Office sent a terse order to Morris: “People themselves must avoid contagion—decline expenditure

NOTER_PAGE: (146 0.8542253521126761 . 0.33454876937101186)

an attempt by the dominion “to off-load financial responsibility for the quarantine on to a government it knew to be on the brink of economic disaster.”

NOTER_PAGE: (147 0.11338028169014085 . 0.6782133090246125)

political downfall came “because he had allowed his conscience, rather than financial concerns, to dictate his actions during the epidemic.”

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medical victory over smallpox was a solitary one. Hagarty’s dismissal reflects the cynicism of Indian administration while Macdonald served as both prime minister and minister of Indian affairs.

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testament to dominion indifference.

NOTER_PAGE: (147 0.75 . 0.12579762989972654)

the Blackfoot were assured that the bison would survive for another ten years.56

NOTER_PAGE: (148 0.32816901408450705 . 0.6700091157702825)

government had three choices in its response to the famine: help the Indians to farm and raise stock, feed them, or fight them.63

NOTER_PAGE: (150 0.8528169014084508 . 0.26526891522333634)

Management of the increasingly serious food situation and Indian affairs generally shifted from a position of “relative ignorance” under the Liberals to one of outright malevolence during the Macdonald regime.75 “Pacification” of the plains Indians was an integral, if not always explicit, component of the Tory government’s program

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many wealthy Niitsitapi were reduced to exchanging their horses for a few cups of flour.

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encounter with a group of Niitsitapi women near the Hand Hills who offered to wash the crew’s dishes. The astonished scientist remarked that, “before they washed the plates, they actually licked them clean.”

NOTER_PAGE: (154 0.7767605633802818 . 0.3536918869644485)

Amid the desperation, Indian Commissioner Dewdney maintained his focus on fiscal restraint.

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as the wise men at Ottawa know more of Indians and Indian matters than those who have passed a lifetime among them, it is of little use saying anything on the subject.

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while the Indians were starving, in many cases to death, the authorities withheld food that was available. The famine on the plains was more than the simple Malthusian equation of too many people and too few bison.115

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Beardy’s refusal to accept government neglect, and the perceived threat from American Dakota who had recently come to Prince Albert, led to the formation of a local militia.124 In 1880, Beardy was temporarily deposed as chief on the questionable charge that he was a cattle thief.125

NOTER_PAGE: (158 0.4971830985915493 . 0.13126709206927986)

Many long-time residents of the west saw the protests of the Carlton Cree as reasonable.

NOTER_PAGE: (158 0.6542253521126761 . 0.12853236098450319)

As the dominion was arming its settlers against the threat of an Indian uprising, thousands of hungry people were abandoning the country.

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The prime minister himself had misgivings about the feasibility of reserve agriculture, but in the absence of an alternative he “found it expedient to promote the plan in parliament.”

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Strict instructions have been given to the agents to require labor from able-bodied Indians for supplies given them. This principle was laid down for the sake of the moral effect that it would have on the Indians

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Although Dewdney enforced the policy, he recognized that, “Until the Indians were settled on reserves, there was, in effect, no work that they could do. In the meantime, the starving condition of the Indians rendered the operation of such a proviso impossible.”

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no concerted attempt was made by the authorities to provide the plains Indians with gainful employment other than the cutting of firewood.150

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people under his care were receiving less than half the ration provided to state prisoners in Siberia.167

NOTER_PAGE: (163 0.7288732394366197 . 0.49042844120328166)

During the summer of 1880, food shortages sparked a number of violent incidents.

NOTER_PAGE: (164 0.29507042253521126 . 0.1649954421148587)

callousness of settlers to the misery of the indigenous population:

NOTER_PAGE: (168 0.3098591549295775 . 0.22789425706472197)

The dominion did not increase its expenditures to counter the growing crisis. In fact, the government responded to Liberal criticism that aid to the Indians was a waste of public money by making even more stringent cuts

NOTER_PAGE: (168 0.5809859154929577 . 0.1640838650865998)

“They must work or starve.”

NOTER_PAGE: (168 0.6823943661971832 . 0.3236098450319052)

Food was to be provided only to people on their reserves, a move intended to undermine the growing resistance of the treaty population.

NOTER_PAGE: (168 0.8380281690140845 . 0.16681859617137648)

Canadian government accomplished the ethnic cleansing of southwestern Saskatchewan of its indigenous population.207 With its usual cynical tone, the Saskatchewan Herald described the removals as “Marching Northward toward the Government Grubpile.”

NOTER_PAGE: (169 0.7345070422535211 . 0.12944393801276208)

Officials were merciless in their use of food to control the First Nations population

NOTER_PAGE: (169 0.8183098591549296 . 0.43299908842297175)

prime minister described the government’s position on relief: “We cannot allow them to die for want of food. … [W]e are doing all we can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense.”

NOTER_PAGE: (169 0.869718309859155 . 0.36371923427529623)

Big Bear, the most prominent of Cree dissidents, adhered to Treaty 6 in exchange for food for his starving band.

NOTER_PAGE: (170 0.2443661971830986 . 0.41385597082953507)

Rations were deliberately withheld until the chief capitulated

NOTER_PAGE: (170 0.35845070422535213 . 0.4448495897903373)

The inadequate Canadian response to the humanitarian crisis was to provide TB with an immune-suppressed population across the region.

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the Canadian Dakota did not suffer the same terrible decline.

NOTER_PAGE: (171 0.36124694376528116 . 0.4738924050632911)

As their treaty neighbours endured hunger and humiliation, the Sisseton Dakota at Standing Buffalo by the end of the 1880s were “completely independent of government aid,

NOTER_PAGE: (172 0.21882640586797067 . 0.43354430379746833)

experience with agriculture

NOTER_PAGE: (172 0.39119804400978 . 0.3837025316455696)

Because they did not depend on the bison as a primary food, the community at Standing Buffalo did not require government rations when the herds disappeared.

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they could live their lives and undertake economic strategies outside the systemic constraints imposed on those who entered into treaties with the crown.

NOTER_PAGE: (172 0.5311735941320294 . 0.44699367088607594)

in less than a decade the “protections” afforded by treaties became the means by which the state subjugated the treaty Indian population.

NOTER_PAGE: (172 0.6228606356968215 . 0.2927215189873418)

Chapter 8. Dominion Administration of Relief, 1883–85

NOTER_PAGE: (173 . 0.176136)

The government was unapologetic for its use of starvation to complete the occupation of reserves,

NOTER_PAGE: (173 0.39486552567237165 . 0.6574367088607594)

suggested to the prime minister that the police were following their own agenda.2

NOTER_PAGE: (173 0.5134474327628362 . 0.40901898734177217)

In October 1884, the force was brought under the mandate of the Department of Indian Affairs.4

NOTER_PAGE: (173 0.6155256723716381 . 0.6305379746835443)

in 1870, the Hudson’s Bay Company introduced steam-powered vessels along the major waterways of the west.

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quickly rendered the centuries-old trade route through Hudson Bay obsolete.

NOTER_PAGE: (174 0.28484107579462103 . 0.18591772151898733)

Baker was an important supplier to the American government, but its stranglehold on dominion contracts made the Conrad brothers and their company rich.

NOTER_PAGE: (175 0.16748166259168704 . 0.7974683544303798)

Baker’s move into Canada quickly made the Hudson’s Bay Company an anachronism

NOTER_PAGE: (176 0.31234718826405866 . 0.16534810126582278)

difficult to overstate Baker’s grip on the commercial economy in the post-treaty period.

NOTER_PAGE: (176 0.5837408312958435 . 0.7721518987341772)

The HBC was still controlled by its governor and committee, who were unwilling to risk the capital needed to fill dominion contracts.17

NOTER_PAGE: (176 0.8257946210268948 . 0.2412974683544304)

unpredictability of the Saskatchewan River.

NOTER_PAGE: (177 0.15342298288508557 . 0.20727848101265822)

Low water levels continued to undermine the HBC trade. In the fall of 1883, the Saskatchewan River ran dry for fifty miles.24

NOTER_PAGE: (177 0.6430317848410758 . 0.44462025316455694)

the HBC could not reliably transport goods using steamers. This was particularly the case with food,

NOTER_PAGE: (177 0.7958435207823961 . 0.5261075949367089)

Baker freighted its goods overland from Fort Benton to Alberta.

NOTER_PAGE: (178 0.14486552567237163 . 0.2697784810126582)

The dominion was quick to respond to the progress on some reserves by reducing assistance, though even bands that had made gains were still not self-sufficient.

NOTER_PAGE: (179 0.793398533007335 . 0.4588607594936709)

Political pressure from the opposition Liberals was an important factor in constraining government expenditures on the Indian population: “The most serious charge laid against the Indian administration prior to the rebellion of 1885 was that of spending too much on feeding the Indians.”

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In Battleford, Vankoughnet announced a radical change in dominion policy: Indians would be given assistance only “if they showed a disposition to help themselves.” Gift giving, a long-standing practice symbolizing respect between parties, was discontinued, and measures were introduced to stop bands from demanding food. So long as the treaty population expected to be fed, “so long will they be helpless as a people, a bill of expense to the country, and a nuisance to their neighbours.”

NOTER_PAGE: (181 0.5605134474327629 . 0.5933544303797468)

even sympathetic accounts have described the reduction of food quotas as extreme.44

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in the fall of 1883. On 27 August, the Indonesian island of Krakatoa exploded

NOTER_PAGE: (182 0.5281173594132029 . 0.4786392405063291)

Official reports of the DIA did not report a drop in reserve crop production even though many Treaty 4 farms were only miles from the Bell Farm. Accounts of agricultural progress on reserves presented in the Sessional Papers might have deliberate falsifications.

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If his patron and party required a positive report on affairs in the northwest, then Dewdney would provide it, despite the large death toll

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“belief that there was manipulation and connivance between Indian Agents and the I. G. Baker Co.”

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“growing indignation at what were clearly corrupt practices.”

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The prime minister admitted that there were “occasional frauds” by contractors but emphasized that “It cannot be considered a fraud on the Indians because they were living on Dominion charity … and, as the old adage says, beggars should not be choosers.” Macdonald then shifted to the culpability of reserve populations in acquiring more than the dominion deemed sufficient.

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Officials steadfastly maintained their dependence on bacon as a staple despite almost continual criticism of it as expensive and difficult to digest (even when it was in good condition).90 When spoiled, however, bacon was deadly.

NOTER_PAGE: (189 0.3545232273838631 . 0.19541139240506328)

Agent MacDonald explained to Dewdney that they “were not getting enough flour but I like to punish them a little.”

NOTER_PAGE: (189 0.828239608801956 . 0.18275316455696203)

Piapot’s plan to hold a council of Treaty 4 chiefs to discuss their conditions was thwarted by the Indian department’s refusal to supply the gathering with rations.98

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members of Piapot’s band who had been cutting cordwood were given rancid bacon for their work.102 W. W. Gibson, a settler whose land was adjacent to the Piapot Reserve, stated that 130 people died.103

NOTER_PAGE: (191 0.6876528117359413 . 0.2674050632911392)

Dewdney replied, “the Indians should eat the bacon or die, and be d____d to them.”

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“his friend the contractor, who happened to be in a land syndicate with him, had 90,000 pounds of bacon to dispose of.”

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Long Lodge was fed rotten meat “bought in Chicago for 1 ½ cents a lb, and sold to this government for 19 cents; also that the Governor shared in the profits of this contract.”

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The One Arrow Reserve near Fort Carlton experienced an astounding death rate of 141 per 1,000 during the winter of 1883–84.116

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The entire band under Sakimay, “with two or three exceptions,” was to be cut from the ration list. Trouble erupted five weeks later. Driven by hunger and frustration, Chief Sakimay and a number of armed men forced their way into the agency storehouse on 18 February. Sixty bags of flour and twelve containers of bacon were taken. Reed later admitted that at least some of the people were starving,

NOTER_PAGE: (195 0.36246943765281175 . 0.23813291139240506)

“Craig had a fixed idea that it was not intended that the Indian should become self-supporting. He was only to be kept quiet till the country filled up when his ill will could be ignored.”

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Officials knew that the scarcity of equipment undermined the work of reserve farmers: “Nothing prevents all of our Indians from being settled on their reserves, except for our incapacity to furnish enough material for agriculture.”

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Settee’s plan failed because the large-scale shift to fish as a subsistence base for the indigenous population would have undermined commercial fishing by newcomers.

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Political appointments to the bureaucracy and dominion indifference to the success of its own agricultural initiative made the position of farm instructor attractive to the worst candidates. Because the DIA controlled almost every aspect of daily life on reserves, even the lowest-ranking employees had considerable power, and many took advantage of their positions. According to Lawrence Clarke, farm instructors were “universally known to be brutal wretches.”

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His summoning of the people to the ration house, a call that essentially began a stampede among the emaciated population, only to inform them that it was an April Fool’s Day prank and they would get nothing, is well documented.163

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“An Indian girl more or less didn’t matter; and I’ve seen rations held back six months till girls of thirteen were handed across as wives for that Sioux brute.”

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One of the killers at Frog Lake, Wandering Spirit, had spent eighteen months in prison for assaulting another DIA employee, John Delaney. While he was incarcerated, Delaney “took his girl wife. Do you wonder that Indian became a rebel?

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Delaney as being “roundly hated for his relationships with very young women of the reserve, and for his casual humiliations of the hungry people.”

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ambivalence of Quinn’s own widow.

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sexual exploitation of Indian women was so pervasive that 45 percent of “one class of officials” in the northwest had sexually transmitted diseases,

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girls as young as thirteen were being sold to white men in the west, some for as little as ten dollars.

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asserting that to Indians “marriage is simply a bargain and sale

NOTER_PAGE: (202 0.886919315403423 . 0.12974683544303797)

By the 1880s, the inadequate rations provided by the DIA had probably driven many women to prostitution simply to feed their families.

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By 1886, the Indian Act was amended to make First Nations prostitutes subject to prosecution, “but there existed within the department a long standing view that Indian women were unwilling partners in this activity.”

NOTER_PAGE: (203 0.7885085574572127 . 0.17009493670886075)

While Norrish was buying sex with flour, the farm instructor at the Stoney Reserve in Morley reportedly kept two “wives” while he was in the community.183

NOTER_PAGE: (204 0.1491442542787286 . 0.6416139240506329)

Sexual contact between DIA officials and First Nations women was probably not limited to the lower levels of the service.

NOTER_PAGE: (204 0.20782396088019559 . 0.3805379746835443)

the accusations against Reed were never pursued,

NOTER_PAGE: (204 0.4352078239608802 . 0.2990506329113924)

spared in recognition of their humanity.187

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trooper Lewis Redman Ord, among those pursuing Big Bear, came upon a woman who had recently hanged herself; “she had been left behind and hearing of our approach had committed suicide in preference to falling into our hands.”

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The judge at the Battleford trials, C. B. Rouleau, who had expressed sympathy for the plight of the Cree in 1884, turned against them after the destruction of his home during the insurrection.203

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Dewdney wanted the hangings to be “a public spectacle.”

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The prime minister acknowledged the political importance of the executions, which “ought to convince the Red Man that the White Man governs.”

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a large number of the surrounding reserve population, including students of the Battleford Industrial School, were brought to witness the hangings.207

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The executed were not cut down from the gallows for fifteen minutes.

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The executions marked the end of Cree resistance

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Chapter 9. The Nadir of Indigenous Health, 1886–91

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In his report for 1886, Edgar Dewdney described the dominion’s initiatives as a “Policy of Reward and Punishment.” Under the plan, bands deemed “loyal” were provided with livestock and other forms of assistance for good conduct. Cattle were sent to reserves to replenish herds depleted during the chaos of the previous year. In contrast, “rebel” bands were punished: their annuities were withheld, and horses and firearms were confiscated.

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The pass system would be enforced throughout the region, making reserves essentially places of incarceration.

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After 1885, the government initiated a serious bureaucratic assault on what it called the “tribal system”: the traditional forms of governance practised by the treaty population.

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DIA permits were required for all transactions between reserves and the outside world.

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weakened the ability of reserve farmers to participate in the growing commercial economy. Self- sufficiency became imperative

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general result of severality was the widespread emergence of subsistence farming, which kept those who toiled in their fields both poor and alienated from the mainstream economy.6

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The deaths of so many chiefs and elders in the aftermath of 1885 were a severe blow to the treaty population.

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The shortage of experienced leaders was compounded by the actions of the DIA in deposing chiefs whom it considered rebellious and unsuitable

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horses and guns were confiscated and thus hobbled efforts to acquire wild game.14

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pass system, “perhaps the most onerous regulation placed on the Indians after the rebellion,”

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further undermined access to game and crippled the economic prospects

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Dewdney knew that imposition of the pass system was on shaky legal ground,

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In 1884, the reserve population peaked, but over the next ten years it would decline precipitously due to malnutrition, overcrowding, exposure, poor sanitation, and oppressive government policies.21 Within a decade, the population at Crooked Lake declined by 41 percent, that at File Hills by 46 percent. Between 1885 and 1889, a third of the inhabitants of the Edmonton reserves either left, renounced their Indian status, or died. By 1889, less than half of the pre-rebellion population of the Battleford reserves remained.

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allowed treaty Indians with white ancestry to apply for scrip; many did, if only to free themselves from the oppressive measures of the Indian Act.

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many of those who acquired new legal status as Métis became itinerant farmers often reliant on the charity of neighbours or the police for their survival.

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In the aftermath of the violence, the DIA severely curtailed ration allotments and cut off rebellious bands altogether. The prime minister acknowledged that the cuts would cause “genuine suffering” but “prevent imposition on the treasury.”

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Mortality rates for bands deemed rebellious for the two years after 1885 are striking. Maureen Lux estimated that the Cree at Thunderchild incurred a mortality rate of 233.5 per 1,000 people and at Sweet Grass 185.0 per 1,000.39 Deaths in the Battleford Agency exceeded births by a ratio of 4:1. So many died among the Sharphead Stoney group in central Alberta that they ceased to exist as a distinct population.40

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Recent completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway not only marked the beginning of large-scale agrarian settlement but also brought a host of new infectious diseases to the indigenous population of the northwest.

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Within a decade of the treaties, divergent health outcomes between relatively healthy northerners and suffering southern communities were well ensconced. As was becoming the norm, those with the least contact with the Indian department were the healthiest.58

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By 1889–90, mortality associated with the measles epidemic was overshadowed by a more deadly outbreak of acute contagious disease. Influenza spread to the malnourished and reserve populations suffering widespread sickness from TB; the attendant mortality resulted in a population nadir.

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Called the Russian flu because of its origin east of the Caucasus Mountains in 1889, the disease spread around the world within a year.63 The pandemic, “the first to move with the speed of trains and steamships,” killed as many as a million people globally.64

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Communities did what they could to cope with the increasing onslaught of disease and death in their midst.81 Many turned to religion.

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The most widespread indigenous revitalization movement of the influenza period was by far the Ghost Dance.

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“dead Indians would return to life and prosperous aboriginal conditions if the Ghost Dance rituals were performed.”

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The Lakota Ghost Dance was akin to a prayer for annihilation of the white man and the return of Indian supremacy.

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Fear of the Lakota was such that Sitting Bull, the leader of Standing Rock, was killed in a botched arrest attempt on 15 December 1890.92 Two weeks later an attempt by the army to disarm a large group of Lakota at Wounded Knee resulted in the killing of over 200 men, women, and children.93 Mooney’s interpretation of events leading to the killings is generally sympathetic to the army, but his account acknowledges that atrocities were committed: “There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants on their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground.”

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The violence at Standing Rock reverberated across the continent.

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anxiety over growing unrest among the reserve population motivated authorities to suppress other indigenous religious practices.105

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since 1885, popular opinion of First Nations people had become increasingly hostile. Once considered merely “nuisances,” “vagrants,” and “members of a dying race,” by the 1890s they were increasingly perceived as “a threat to the property and lives of White settlers.”

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extending Section 14 of the Indian Act to prohibit most religious ceremonies.107

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there was no uprising on Canadian reserves as there had been in the United States. Cultural differences between American and Canadian Indians limited the spread of the Ghost Dance

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Canadian Indians came to rely on their own spiritual practices, such as the Sun Dance, for strength.

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Because official records are clouded by abandonment, exile, and the relinquishment of Indian status, we will never know the precise number of indigenous plains people who died of disease in the years after 1885. However, we cannot deny that the suffering on reserves in the 1880s and 1890s was horrendous.

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By the mid-1890s, the populations of many reserves began to stabilize.113 But the period of large-scale immigration to the west had begun.

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The health of reserves became such a marginal issue that it largely disappeared from the popular consciousness

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reserves in southern Alberta were in need of more assistance because of the threat that the hungry posed to private cattle stocks in the region.

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In southern Alberta, the peak in mortality resulted from the synergy of a severe measles epidemic and rampant tuberculosis. Among the Niitsitapi, the nadir of the population did not occur until after the turn of the century,

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A simple yet significant step was recognition that adequate ventilation in homes was critical to control the airborne spread of diseases, especially tuberculosis. Woodstoves, the main source of heat after the transition from tents to wooden structures, were identified as important factors in disease transmission.

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acknowledgement that tent living was healthy if not conducive to the dominion policy of “advancement” for the reserve population through the adoption of wooden homes.

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Milk continued to be a vector for the spread of TB to children at schools for decades after the pasteurization eliminated the threat in the commercial milk supply in western Canada in the early 20th century.

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By the beginning of the First World War, physicians who opposed the interpretation of tuberculosis as hereditary were in the minority.

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If his estimates of the peak mortality on the Qu’Appelle reserves are correct, a European population would not experience a comparable rate until 1942—among the Jewish population of the Warsaw ghetto.145

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the official ultimately responsible for the health of First Nations people until 1945 was the minister of mines and resources.

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A fitting metaphor for the plight facing the plains Indians is that of the Kainai man Charcoal, who “became the most wanted man on Canada’s western frontier” for killing his wife’s lover and a police officer who tried to arrest him.150 Although ill with tuberculosis, Charcoal eluded the authorities for a year before his capture. When his death sentence was carried out, he was on the verge of expiring. Hugh Dempsey described his execution: “Unable to walk, the Indian was loaded onto a wagon, driven to the scaffold, and carried up the last few steps to eternity. His body, having no will of its own, was not even capable of standing, so a chair was placed over the trapdoor, a white cloth draped over his head, and the noose placed around his neck.”151 With the execution of a man so sick that he had to be carried to the gallows, Canadian justice was done.

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Conclusion

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two distinct phases

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period of introduced acute contagious diseases

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result of extension of the global economic system to western Canada.

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groups with eastern origins fared better than those with western origins because of their longer experience with diseases that provided them with increased immunity.

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The Anishinabe inherited much of southern Manitoba from the Assiniboine people, who had dominated the region for 500 years before arrival of the first epidemics.

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population density of the Assiniboine communities described by La Vérendrye in the 1730s greatly increased the death toll

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they suffered the full brunt of the smallpox epidemic in the 1830s

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Today the Assiniboine people, once the dominant nation of the region, are relegated to a handful of reserve communities across the plains.

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The Cree people of the Saskatchewan parklands did not experience their virgin soil outbreak of smallpox until the 1780s. So many died that the existing band structure of the region buckled.

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ethnogenesis of the Plains Cree, who dominated the eastern plains for the next century.

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In many cases, the First Nations that entered into treaties with the crown were inheritors of the plains rather than inhabitants since prehistoric times.

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First Nations leaders saw treaties first and foremost as a bridge to a future without bison.

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assuring the Cree that “they would not be allowed to die like dogs.”1 Within two years of that promise, the bison were gone. Their disappearance ended a way of life that had endured for 10,000 years. While extermination of the herds was the greatest environmental catastrophe ever on the grasslands, it also brought a fundamental change in the power dynamic between First Nations and the Canadian state. With loss of the bison, indigenous people lost their independence and power.

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The value of dominion ration contracts soared as the government scrambled to feed the thousands of people desperately in need of assistance. One firm, I. G. Baker and Company, seized the opportunity and quickly secured most of these lucrative contracts.

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government used food as a means to control the indigenous population. The strategy was cruel but effective.

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I. G. Baker abused its privileged position, supplying inferior or contaminated food to the hungry to maximize its profit, often with the complicity of government officials. Canada’s chief official in the west, Edgar Dewdney, was almost certainly on the Baker payroll.

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Food rotted in storehouses on reserves as the malnourished population succumbed

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dependence on rations made many vulnerable to the predations of officials who abused their authority. Women were especially vulnerable to sexual abuse

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When violence erupted in the spring of 1885, many of those killed had been personally implicated in the physical or sexual abuse of the treaty population.

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Implementation of the pass system and further cuts to DIA spending increased the misery on reserves while confining the population to them.

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the notion that indigenous people were biologically more susceptible to disease than the mainstream population was medically and politically orthodox.

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the decline of First Nations health was the direct result of economic and cultural suppression.

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The Cree negotiators at Treaty 6 recognized the need for their people to adapt to the new economic paradigm taking shape in the west. They acknowledged that the conversion would be difficult. What they failed to plan for was the active intervention of the Canadian government in preventing them from doing so.

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Maps

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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