Do Hereby Cede, Release, Surrender and Yield Up to the Government of Canada for Her Majesty the Queen

Morris's first treaty drew on the two pre-Confederation treaties Commissioner William Robinson had negotiated in 1849-50 with the Ojibwa peoples along the north shore of Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Treaty 3, in turn, became a template for the numbered treaties that followed. The key to all of these treaties was their threefold provision with respect to land.

The first provision, the one that led off the text of every treaty because it was essential for the Government of Canada, was the statement that the Indian signatories "do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of Canada for her Majesty the Queen and Her successors forever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands included within the following limits."

--Peter H. Russell, Canada's Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 183-184.