Signing a Blank Piece of Paper: Treaty Making on Vancouver Island

Douglas received Barclay's instructions in December 1849. Early the following summer, he called together the Songhee and Esquimalt, who lived at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, and negotiated the first land surrender with them. For a payment of 371 blankets valued at seventeen shillings each, he persuaded the chiefs to show their approval by making their signs on the bottom of a blank piece of paper. Douglas then wrote to Barclay and asked him to provide a text. The one the secretary supplied was a copy of the legal document that the New Zealand Land Company used to buy tracts from the Maori. Douglas copied Barclay's wording and added the details he needed to address local circumstances. It seems odd that a New Zealand document served as the pragmatic model for the first colonial land surrenders on the Pacific Coast of Canada, but apparently no one paid any attention to the well-established treaty-making traditions of Upper Canada.

--Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, 4th ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), 186.

The Mica Bay War Leads to the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior Treaties of 1850

The 1841 amalgamation of Upper and Lower Canada as the colony of Canada (creating Canada West and Canada East) had no immediate impact on land-acquisition policies. By this time, however, the firmly entrenched settler society of Canada West had little interest in continuing the long-established surrender formalities. When non-Native miners began uncovering copper deposits along the north shore of Lakes Huron and Superior in the late 1840s, the Crown Lands Department issued a number of mining licenses for the area, even though the Aboriginal people had not surrendered any of the territory. Leaders of the local Ojibwa and Métis settlements reminded the colonial government of their sovereignty in the area; in 1848 a party of Métis and Ojibwa from Canada and the United States burned a Lake Superior mining operation to stress the point (an event known as the Mica Bay War). The local Métis threatened to invite their relatives living at Red River to join the struggle if the government did not respond. At this important juncture, the governor general of Canada, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, intervened and wrote the colonial secretary in London to say, "I am much annoyed by a difficulty which has occurred with some Indians on the shore of Lake Superior." He explained that the previous governor general had given licenses to certain mining companies "with out making arrangements with the Indians." As a result of these interventions, the colonial government negotiated the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior treaties in 1850.

--Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, 4th ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), 156.

The Sun or Thirst Dance as a Threat to Canada's Colonization of the West

Sam Steele, superintendent of the North-West Mounted Police (renamed Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920), was one of the first government officials to regard the continuation of the sun or thirst dance as a potential threat to Canada's colonization of the West. After attending the ceremony at a Kainaiwa (Blood) encampment in 1889, he warned headquarters: "Old warriors take this occasion of relating their experience of former days counting their scalps and giving the number of horses they were successful in stealing. This has a pernicious effect on the young men; it makes them unsettled and anxious to emulate the deeds of their forefathers."

--Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, 4th ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), 230.

A Plan for Cultural Genocide

After the North-West Rebellion, the federal government redoubled its efforts to assimilate Native people into the dominant white culture. Their plan had two components, both aimed at destroying the viability of Native societies. The first outlawed key cultural institutions, and the second sought to "re-educate" aboriginal children. The policies implemented by politicians and Department of Indian Affairs bureaucrats at this time amounted to a plan for cultural genocide. They were put into effect in a particularly heavy-handed fashion in the West, where officials still regarded the Plains and coastal nations as potential threats to orderly settlement.

--Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, 4th ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), 222.

The Threat of Starvation Bends Native People to Edgar Dewdney's Will

Edgar Dewdney, who served as Indian commissioner for Manitoba and the North-West Territories from 1879 to 1888, had no qualms about being ruthless. He used the threat of starvation to bend Native people to his will. When he took office, the commissioner faced two immediate problems. Many Plains Cree resented the government's slow pace in implementing treaties 1, 2, 4, and 6. Those who had signed the treaties were unhappy because federal officials had delivered so few of the promised livestock and little of the farming equipment; they had not surveyed most of the reserves; and they had taken no steps to preserve the few remaining buffalo. Some of the most influential Plains Indian leaders refused to join Treaty 4 or 5 unless they could obtain improvements in the terms.

--Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began, 4th ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016), 215-216.