Native American History: Key Periods & Transformations

Natives Before Contact

• Native religions suggest aboriginal peoples originated in North America.
• Archeologists theorize they originated in Asia.
• The consensus is that initial arrival in North America occurred at least 12,000 years ago.
• Early hunters migrated by hunting game over a land bridge between Siberia and the new world.
• Early hunters used spears, later adopting the atlatl.
• By 2500 AD, the bow and arrow was adopted by Indigenous hunters
• Around 9000 BC, many giant mammoths and other large game, slowly went extinct as a result of global warming and overhunting
• Hunters then concentrated on buffalo, as demonstrated Head Smashed In Cliffs in Alberta.
• Trade networks developed.
• Pottery from the Hopewell group was found in Alberta

Western Natives' Lifestyles

• Three main lifestyles existed among Western Natives: West Coast, Woodland (Prairie West), and Plains Buffalo Hunters.

West Coast Natives

• They relied on fishing.
• Society was divided into nobles, commoners, and slaves.
• West coast households had their own hunting and fishing territory.
• Lineage was traced through the maternal line, traced through the male line in the south, and traced through both lines in the central area.
• The village was the main political unit.
• Political organization did not extend beyond the local village.

Haida Women

• They resided in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
• Property was inherited through female lines.
• They were active traders and bargainers.
• Haida marriages were arranged by the bride's father and her mother's uncle.
• Wives were expected to accept their husbands' authority.
• Haida women occasionally served as chiefs and had little political power.
• They were excluded from hunting and fishing.
• A wife's consent was needed for most trade deals.
• They participated in ceremonies and could be shamans.

Salish Women

• They had little input into community decision-making.
• Husbands were chosen by their parents.
• Upon marriage, they lived in their husbands' village.
• In the event of divorce, children remained with the father.
• They used cedar/fur for boats, household goods, totem poles, and houses.
• The potlatch was an important gift-giving ceremony used to inaugurate the chief or mourn the dead, or simply to confirm status

Woodland (Prairie West) Natives

• Followed a seasonal cycle of movement in pursuit of game like deer, moose, and caribou.
• Hunted woodland bison, primarily in the winter.
• Summer gatherings involved fishing, plants, and berries.
• The social organization was informal.
• Leadership consisted of a chief for each winter band (strongest hunter)
• A respected leader from the winter bands would make up the larger summer bands.
• Sharing was valued, with neighboring bands allowing hunting in their traditional lands when game was scarce.

Women's Work in Woodland Societies

• Pitched tents and set up camp.
• Carried effects from camp to camp.
• Fetched water and cut firewood.
• Snared small animals and caught fish.
• Prepared hides and dressed the game.
• Wove baskets and made pots.
• Collected birch bark & repaired canoes.
• Made snowshoes, moccasins, clothes, made tools.
• Gathered berries and cooked the food.
• Primarily responsible for raising the children.

Athapascan First Nations

• Both women and men could be shamans.

Plains Buffalo Hunters

• Included Plains Assiniboines, allies of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
• Algonquian Siksika originated from the woodlands.
• Buffalo main staple for food, clothing, lodging, tools, and fuel.
• Buffalo were hunted using cliffs, fences, or open plains.
• Large-scale hunting occurred in the summer.
• In winter, they congregated on the edge of the park belt or river valleys.

Male Culture on the Plains

• Status was derived from being tough and masculine.
• Belonging to a military society
• Military societies protected the band, enforced hunting rules, and provided order during summer gatherings.
• Women butchered buffalo and made pemmican (buffalo meat, fat, and berries pounded together and dried).

Plains Buffalo Hunter and Woodland Societies

• Quite egalitarian.
• The good of the group was emphasized over the individual.
• Leadership exercised by example and persuasion rather than coercion.
• Chiefs were chosen for their ability and bloodline.
• Chiefs did accept attempts to use force.
• Abuse of power resulted in loss of prestige and influence.
• Influence was not used for social gain.
• Social status came from generosity rather than wealth.
• Chiefs were responsible for looking after the people.
• Leadership was shared based on situations, different leaders would be selected by social consensus.

Native Religion

• Drew no distinction between humans and the natural environment. Spirits in all things were placated through rituals, prayers, which avoided of taboos.
• Believed in a supreme being or "great spirit."
• They attempted to access through vision quests, shamans, or religious societies.
• Happiness and survival depended on spiritual communion.
• Resources would disappear if faith was broken

Fur Trade

• Most natives were affected by the European fur trade in the 17th century.
• French fur traders established posts in Manitoba by the early 18th century.
• The fur trade relied on native participation.
• Natives controlled much of the fur trade era.
• Cree and Assiniboine middlemen made profits.
• Natives needed to be paid fairly because of competition between fur trade companies

Key Fur Trade Companies

• Hudson's Bay Company
• North West Company (1783-84)
• Competition led to fighting and combining.
• Natives faced a buying monopoly and lower prices

Benefits of Fur Trade

• Introduced pots, pans, sewing needles, metal knives, and guns.
• Trade goods made lives easier, but sometimes caused problems.

Negative Effects of Fur Trade

• Companies sold liquor to natives.
• Trading sessions were infrequent due to distance.
• Reputable companies avoided liquor.
• Traders occasionally debauched women.
• European diseases decimated tribes (smallpox epidemics in 1780-81 & 1887-88)

Motivations for Native Trade

• Arthur Ray: economic motives and material self-interest.
• Natives used competition among companies to get quality goods at the best price.
• Cree and Assiniboine middle-men frustrated HBC traders and inland natives.
• Calvin Martin: Natives eradicated fur-bearing animals whose spirits caused epidemics.
• Historicists criticized Martin's theory for relying on conjecture instead of evidence.
• Most aboriginals blamed white traders and sorcerers.
• Indigenous peoples had different shopping habits then Europe– they weren’t drive by good deals, but rather were inelastic
• Indigenous peoples didn’t trade for more goods since they had limited capacity to bring them back

Differing Perspectives on Native Motivations

• Brad believed that natives lacked materialistic mindset of Europeans.
• Sylvia Van Kirk: Native women sought status and influence as guides, interpreters, intermediaries, and providers of foodstuffs and clothes. also sought more trade goods
• Women wanted to improve their material lives
• Opportunities for domestic labour lightened.
• Downside–pregnancies, less control over children
• Women took every opportunity to take control of their own lives.
• Van Kirk didn't pay insufficient attention to community context: some women married traders to help families; some forced by fathers to marry traders to benefit their bands
• Jaquline Peterson: some women married traders because of dream/vision
• Simplest explanation: pragmatism to make day-to-day lives easier. better tools, guns, clothes

Native Women and European Fur-Traders

• HBC prohibited marriages but later allowed relationships with native women.
• Some offspring joined the mother's band becoming part of the "homeguard" and fully assimilated into mothers culture
• Women’s culture = Amerindian.
• Some HBC officers took active role in raising child, and they assimilated to fathers lives
• Men culture = country born.
• Unions between the NWC men and amerindian women shaped a somewhat fur trade society then the HBC.
• “serial monogamy'-- Several wives– but only one at a time.
• Some NWC men assimilated children into fathers culture
• Offspring of native women and french voyageurs formed the Metis people. That created a unique culture from both native and European societies
• Included the Michif language, a blend of Cree and French. Another one is Scottish gaelic and ojibway.
• They were immune to euro diseases so the population grew and settled around Canada, and Winnipeg.

End of Native Autonomy (19th Century)

• Natives became impoverished, dependent, and demoralized.
• 1821: NW and HBC merged and reduced competition.
• Natives could not play companies off each other. they were entirely at the mercy of HBC
• Ojibwe of SE Manitoba were among the first prairie natives to lose self-reliance.
• Some were forced to trade pelts of small animals for pemmican.
• Some became reliant on wage work w farms.
• Gerald Friesen: By mid century first nations had “exchanged the econ of hunting gathering back for employee status”
• Competition for resources increased friction between tribes.
• 1869 Cree diplomats were killed by Siksika warriors during an attempt to reach a truce.
• Whiskey traders moved into southern AB in 1860.
• traders: JJ Healy and Alfred Hamilton.
• Mid 1870s, roughly 40 whiskey posts est in Alberta that all traced back to Fort Benton, Montana to get supplies.
• Indigenous people were addicted to alcohol, and violence occurred.
• 1873: Cypress Hills Massacre killed at least 20 Assiniboine.
• Disease epidemics in 1837-38 killed ¾ of Assiniboine, and other tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
• 1870s: Cree attack Blackfoot Confederacy by Old Man River.
• Kainai were joined by allies (Piikani), who had repeating rifles.
• The Blackfoot Confederacy and Cree concluded a truce.

Missionaries and Natives

• Missionaries contributed to social and cultural problems.
• Natives had adapted to significant changes in the past, but they did not adapt to Christianity well
• Abuse of children in church and residential schools occured
• Natives were sometimes forced to become Christians
• Missionaries could be unwilling to separate biblical teachings from their own European culture.
• People believed for natives to become Christian, they had to become European

Positive Aspects of Missionaries

• Promoted peace among warring first nations.
• Lobbied the government in agriculture and healthcare.
• Advocated for Indigenous peoples who would have had difficulty making their views known to government officials.
• John McDougall: supported banning the traditional dances.

Missionary Activity

• Methodists had some impact on Cree and Stoney Dakota.
• John McDougall married Abigail Steinhauer.
• Catholics had more converts and were cooperative w the Native groups.
• French Canadian Father Lacombe became influential.
• Prairie natives demanded treaties partly due to missionaries advice

Treaties

• Ojibwa protested surveyors on their land.
• Government was willing to sign because the Royal Proclamation (1763) recognized Indian title.
• Robinson Treaties (Ontario) established precedent of creating reserves.
• Treaties were cost effective over the US model.
• It's said that Ottawa did not make their own treaty terms.
• Natives won concessions government was not willing to give
• Natives demand: Farm instruction, land base, aid in times of crisis, and right to fish/hunt
• In the 7 numbered treaties 1871-77: Natives received cash payments, annuities, reserves, and schools on reserves.
• Treaties promised livestock, farm implements, and sometimes feed for crops.
• Treaty 3 natives obtaining 640 acres of land per family while Treaty 6 native convinced to provide medicine.
• Treaty Eight: 1899 gave Individuals or bands received stipulated amount of land.
• More solidarity could have earned natives a better deal.
• Some natives were willing to settle for less and did not exercise their power.

Native Understanding of Treaties

• Most scholars and indigenous peoples did not think that Natives understood they were giving away land forever.
• JR Miller said that "they did not hold to a concept of property right in a European legal sense… to them, the treaties were… pacts of friendship, peace, and mutual support” They understood the treaties were not an abandonment of their rights and interests.”
• Irene Spry says that they couldn't have understood they were ceding their land because they had no concept of actual possession and exchange of real estate.
• Gerald Friesoen says that some Natives understood the implications of the land transfers better than others

Federal "Indian Policy"

• Main aims: protection and assimilation
• It was based on a view that natives had to be sheltered from exploiters from white colonists
• Forbade sale of alcohol to natives.
• It banned non band members from reserve and women from bars to curb prostitution.
• Also: Prevention of of Native land sales for the Goal of assimilation.

Native Assimilation

• Accomplished through enfranchisement.
• Male Indians would become a white man, get the vote, acquire reserve land, and pay taxes.
• 1880 Amendment Act provided two routes to enfranchisement: men could graduate from university or become literate, farm reserve land for three years, be free of debt, and be of good moral character.
• Natives resisted the law, and resisted assimilating.
• Ottowa tried to stop cultural practices Tried to impose an elected chief instead of the hereditary chiefs.

Residential Schools

• Were boarding schools located on reserves for students aged 10-14.
• Were industrial schools were off reserves for students aged 14-18
• Girls were taught domestic science, boys were taught trade
• Significant sexual and physical abuse and a high death rate are associated with these institutions. More than a quarter of students would die from various diseases
• Students were forbidden from speaking their own language, resulting in loneliness and culture shock.
• Parents visited the schools where their children learnt/complained that children didn’t learn and performed manual labour.
• Realizing the industrial schools had failed, Ottawa shut them down.

Agriculture Fail

• The government was slow to provide tools, seed, livestock; reserves often on inferior land; instructors were incompetent
• Livestock was sometimes successful
• At a time where white farmers were paving the way for more competent tools, giving the Indigenous hand tools was a recipe for disaster.
• 1888: Hayter surveyed reserves into individual plots for natives to farm with hand tools. That opened the way to for the eventual break up of the reserves.

Selling Reserves

• Government coaxed First Nations to sell parts of their reserves.
• proceeds would supposedly fight poverty and develop agriculture and pay off debts
• The 1906 Indian Act was amended to allow government to advance cash to native groups who agreed to land surrender.
• 1911, municipalities could expropriate reserve land for roads and railways.
• Facing legislation from a colonial government, they sold a fifth of their land in the west.
• Siksika lost half of their reserve and With less land, they found it harder to provide for themselves
• An Monopolistic fur trade industry, a decline in game, and the disappearance of the buffalo, liquor, attacks on culture, residential schooling, and agricultural and land policies, all of these meant that by early 1900s, the formerly proud hunters of the prairies were on the defensive and had become demoralized and impoverished wards of the state.

Metis Position

• In Treaty 8 (1899), many chose treaty as an "indian" or land/money scrip.
• Nomadic Metis rejected land
• Inadvertently, as immigrants arrived, Metis felt land pressure and prejudice.
• Metis and Natives benefited from rising fur prices.
• Competition between fur trappers/hunters led to game depletion.
• Government allowed hunting/trapping for subsistence after protests.

Objective Impact of National Policies

• Based on rationality, evidence.

Subjective Impact of National Policies

• Purely about the effect on thinking/feelings.

Dominion Land Act (1872)

• Provided 160 acres of free land to males over 21 and heads of households.
• Women could only get that land if they were Widows, divorcees, or proof of husband abandonment.
• Must live on land for 3 months a year, cultivate 30 acres, and construct a permanent residence.
• Applicants could preempt adjacent quarter section until 1889.
• Men were pleased with very few complaints, they were getting new land
• Women carried the “homestead for women” campaign from issues in pre WW1, since men were not in the trenches

Consequences of Land Act

• Made Canada competitive with US in bidding for immigrants.
• Good land in the United States was gone in the 1890s.
• The Canadian west was peopled in a short period of time.
• Western Canada accounted for 8% of the country’s population in 1901.

Northwest Mounted Police (1873-)

• They performed a wide range of judicial, civil and political functions.
• Police supervised indigenous affairs, acted as postmen, census takers, customs and relief officers, collected crop reports, provided medical service, performed intelligence work, mediated labour disputes, hired locals to work for the government and even acted as magistrate: tried many of the subjects they arrested
• Generally performed their duties because: Ottawa's full support (unique american army with Washington), officers were high quality. Enforced minority and indigenous rights and Gained respect of white public. Their only difficulty was their enforcement of prohibition.

Native Relations with Mounties

• Initially impressed due to liquor trade suppression
• Natives were treated equally.
• White testimony counted in court.
• Respect later waned as mounties controlled native activities/movements such as the Pass system.
• Mounties helped keep West relatively peaceful vs US.
• Canadian Natives desired peace due to exhaustion on fighting
• Canadian settlers less inclined to attack natives.
• The Mounties were viewed positively by natives, which faded as the government used them.

Contruction of CPR

• The company gets
• 25 mil
• 25 mil acress
• 11,000 acres of track
• Tax exemptions
• Monopoly clause: no competing line
• 15 million guarantee on company bond
• Many westerners felt terms granted to CPR were excessive and generous and Were unhappy that Ottawa had sanctioned a monopoly.
• Private railway barons had to meet in secret to deal with competition, But that wasn’t the case in Canada
• Freight-rate relief came in 1898 with Crow’s Nest pass Agreement with the removal of the 20% the railway companies were taxing them .

Hope for Further Freight-rate reductions: railway competition arrives

• William Mackenzie and Donald Mann creates the Canadian Northern Railway (1901) which Aligned to the lake head and were building westward from manitoba
• 215 million provided worth of loans and loan for the railway
• Arrival of the new two rails did not reduce rate as much as they had hoped.
• They Complained that railway rates were higher in the west then in the east (were)
• The policy of “fair discrimination” policy for higher railway tarifs in the west major subjective impact on the west, and made lasting regional grievances for the west. These issues persisted even to today

Tariffs

• Farmers didn’t like tariffs
• Argued tariff encouraged formation of monopolies— fosters uneconomic development, that it was a costly and inefficient means of deriving gov revenuew
• Those in British COlumbia Dislike tariff Didn’t like paying highs prices to benefit others
• It created the farmers political party after the war

Metis Exodus From Red River (1870s)

• Promised security of tenure, yet left in 1870s.
• Sprague's view: Metis were swindled out of their land by conspiracy.
• amendments of the Manitoba Act made rejects because they couldn’t meet criteria.
• Ens' view: Involvement in Buffalo Rouge trade where Metis relocated further west.
• Gov policy made it hard to ownership of their lots

Winnipeg (1891-)

• A growing hub of the west.
• 18k People move to Manitoba

Manitoba's Border

• Ontarios Felt like Woods should be with them but Manitoba and J.A. MacDonald did not
• They took it to court which ended in Ontarios favour. J.A Mac D respected the results

Political Change

• 1880: Manitoba made railway and OTTAWA said to respect it
• 1883: The Farmer Protective Union formed
• 1884: Union was suspected to have liberal ties
• 1887: Government made railway but gave to an American company
• Because The american railroad was not charging tariff it was not a success

Patron Of Industry

• A group call for tariff deductions and ran for politics
• Laurier used the Crow Act but did not follow through. This resulted in the people of Manitoba to split up
• People in the industry then would have Douglas convince a higher up to form Royal Commissions: Was an Act Passed in 1900 and it was made to be Fair

School Controversy

• With more British going to Manitoba they wanted no ties to french and to be more like England
• Man school act was passed, it's not great. They almost reinstate catholic schools but bill isn't passed due to parliament dissolvement.

Sunny Way

• In 1896 this happened
• Laurier made a government compromise : Laurier Greenway
• To respect this single school house
• If they were from 40 cat students in an urban school and 10 cath students in a rural school.
• If their was a minister of faith could conduct religious instruction In school
• It was bilingual instruction and This was generally seem as tolerable

North War Controversy

• Louis Riel comes back to settle in what is now known Saskatchewan
• Land and railways, land Registrations and democracy
• The act said that it would have 5 rep and no way to find
• Louis riel came and wanted better treatement of the native

North West (1885)

• The metit made government but where quickly shut downed from forces sent and lost. This shut down all diplomatic solutions between Government and Natives
• It’s believe that Thomas Flanagan believe it was Riels fault that this all started
• Gerald said that it was the governments
• Spragu Argues that it was an Ottawa act that they did this out of fear from Reil
• After riel was captures a Trial was held which ended in Riel was to be hung

Explore the pivotal moments in Native American history, from the 'Before Contact' era to the end of the fur trade. Examine the impact of European interactions on Native social and economic structures. Discover the defining activities that bridged these significant historical periods.