Economies prior to the late 20th Century
During the 1870s, the traditional way of life of Plains Peoples became less and less possible. For one thing, the bison were rapidly disappearing. First Nations were losing their main source of food, clothing, footwear, and shelter. A culture grounded in bison hunting was losing its organizing principle.
Secondly, settlers were arriving in great numbers. As police did not exist in western Canada until 1874, when the Northwest Mounted Police (today’s RCMP) arrived, and since the area was weeks away from Ottawa, a “Wild West” culture of lawlessness that had characterized the later fur trade continued to threaten Indigenous well-being.
Writes Daschuk (2013), “Predations against First Nations are well documented in the years before the arrival of Canadian law in the west in 1874. Occasionally, First Nations turned on their neighbours in the increasingly desperate and hostile environment of the northern plains.”
The government of Canada could hardly control the western movement of settlers, and anyway it was eager to expand the nation from Sea to Sea as proclaimed in Canada’s motto Ad Mare Usque Ad Mare.[1] The map below shows how isolated British Columbia was from Eastern Canada in 1871. British Columbia had finally joined Confederation based on the promise that a railway would be built to connect it to Eastern Canada within 10 years.
As explained by the Canadian Encyclopedia, the young Canada established itself, and bolstered itself against potential American ambitions, by building the Canadian Pacific Railway from North Bay, Ontario to Port Moody, British Columbia, and settling towns along the railroad’s path.
While settlers often crowded out or pushed out First Nations, the Canadian government itself appeared to follow the correct procedure to acquire land for settlement. As mandated by King George’s Royal Proclamation made a century earlier, the Crown negotiated treaties to obtain Indigenous land, then provided this land to the railway.
In the context of Euro-Canadian settlement and the disappearance of bison, First Nations of the Plains were under heavy pressure to sign treaties that might provide a small but secure land base, some economic development assistance, and some protection from famine and illness.
Ever since the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the British had been arranging treaties with First Nations in order to acquire land for European settlement. This process usually involved setting aside land, called reserves, for the exclusive use of the First Nation. In fact, land had been set aside for First Nations in Eastern Canada as early as 1637. Different reserves were governed in different ways until the Indian Act (1876) was passed to regulate all reserves.
The Numbered Treaties 1871 + :
The treaty-making and reservation process which secured Indigenous land for the railway and for settlement was welcomed – in principle – by many of the First Nations involved. First Nations were concerned about wh