The Riel Rebellion and After
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“We have done all we could to make them work as agriculturists; we have done all we could, by the supply of cattle, agricultural implements and instruction, to change them from a nomadic to an agricultural life … We have had a wonderful success; but still we have had the Indians; and then in these half-breeds, enticed by white men, the savage instinct was awakened; the desire of plunder -- aye, and, perhaps, the desire of scalping -- the savage idea of a warlike glory, which pervades the breast of most men, civilised or uncivilised, was aroused in them, and forgetting all the kindness that had been bestowed upon them, forgetting all the gifts that had been given to them, forgetting all that the Government, the white people and the Parliament of Canada had been doing for them, in trying to rescue them from barbarity; forgetting that we had given them reserves, the means to cultivate those reserves, and the means of education how to cultivate them -- forgetting all these things, they rose against us.”
Sir John A. Macdonald, 1885
"[Indians . . .] are simply living on the benevolence and charity of the Canadian Parliament and . . . beggars should not be choosers."
John A. Macdonald, 1885
“We acquired the North-West country in 1870. Not a life was lost, not a blow was struck, not a pound nor a dollar was spent in warfare, in that long period that has since intervened. I have not hesitated to tell this House, again and again, that we could not always hope to maintain peace with the Indians; that the savage was still a savage, and that until he ceased to be savage, we were always in danger of a collision, in danger of war, in danger of an outbreak. I am only surprised that we have been able so long to maintain peace -- that from 1870 until 1885 not one single blow, not one single murder, not one single loss of life, has taken place.”
Sir John A. Macdonald, 1885
"Poundmaker was tried and convicted on evidence that, in any ordinary trial would have ensured his acquittal without the jury leaving the box, but the prejudice against the Indians in the North-West was so great that he could not get a fair trial."
Lt. Col. George T. Denison, 1900
"I am not guilty (of waging war). ... I am glad of my works in the Queen’s country this spring. ... When my brothers and the pale faces met in the fight at Cut Knife Hill I saved the Queens’ men. ... Everything I could do was done to prevent bloodshed. Had I wanted war, I would not be here now. I would be on the prairie. You did not catch me. I gave myself up. You got me because I
wanted peace."
Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker), 26 May 1885
"It [the participation of a small number of Indians in the Riel Rebellion] affected all Aboriginal people after the rebellion. For close to a century, to be an Indian was to be invisible, so far as the government and the majority of Canadians were concerned. . . Before the North West Rebellion, Canadians had seen them as 'our Indians' in an expression of national pride because of the relationship between the two groups was so much superior to its American equivalent. Afterwards, Aboriginal people came to be regarded as just 'the Indians' or, worse, as 'the Indian problem' – a complication, an irritant, a disappointment."
Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker. Sir John A. Macdonald
"Poundmaker was tried and convicted on evidence that, in any ordinary trial would have ensured his acquittal without the jury leaving the box, but the prejudice against the Indians in the North-West was so great that he could not get a fair trial."
Lt. Col. George T. Denison, 1900
"I am not guilty (of waging war). ... I am glad of my works in the Queen’s country this spring. ... When my brothers and the pale faces met in the fight at Cut Knife Hill I saved the Queens’ men. ... Everything I could do was done to prevent bloodshed. Had I wanted war, I would not be here now. I would be on the prairie. You did not catch me. I gave myself up. You got me because I wanted peace."
Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker), 26 May 1885
"It [the participation of a small number of Indians in the Riel Rebellion] affected all Aboriginal people after the rebellion. For close to a century, to be an Indian was to be invisible, so far as the government and the majority of Canadians were concerned. . . Before the North West Rebellion, Canadians had seen them as 'our Indians' in an expression of national pride because of the relationship between the two groups was so much superior to its American equivalent. Afterwards, Aboriginal people came to be regarded as just 'the Indians' or, worse, as 'the Indian problem' – a complication, an irritant, a disappointment."
Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker. Sir John A. Macdonald
Indian Act and the Pass System
“No rebel Indians should be allowed off the Reserves without a pass signed by an I.D. official. The dangers of complications with white men will thus be lessened. & by preserving a knowledge of individual movements any inclination to petty depredations may be checked by the facility of apprehending those who commit such offences.”
Public Archives of Canada, RG 10, Vol. 37 10, file 19,550-3. Hayter Reed to Edgar Dewdney, 20 July 1885.
[The pass system was brought in as an emergency measure and was enforced until 1941, though the practice was never approved by Parliament.]
"He cannot visit a friend on a neighbouring reserve without a permit. He cannot go to the nearest market town unless provided with a permit. In what was his own country and on his own land he cannot travel in peace without a permit. He cannot buy and sell without a permit. He may raise cattle but he cannot sell them unless the government official allows. He may cultivate the soil but he is not the owner of his own produce. He cannot sell firewood or have from the land that is his by Divine and citizen right, and thus reap the result of his own industry unless subject to the caprice or whim of one who often becomes an autocrat."
Missionary John McDougall, 1902
"You think I encouraged my people to take part in the trouble. I did not. I advised against it."
Chief Big Bear, at his trial, September 1885
"The Plains Cree's reward for that loyalty [bands that remained loyal during the Riel Rebellion] was the imposition on them of the Indian Act, Canada's legislative instrument of colonization, under which Indian agents would direct the management of their affairs, their traditional recreations would be prohibited, and their children removed from them to be educated in residential schools in an all-out effort to destroy their culture and identity."
Peter H. Russell, Canada's Odyssey, p.168
"[Saskatchewan'] settlers harboured racist views of Indigenous peoples due in part to misleading, sensational, condemning and often completely wrong coverage of their role in the resistance (in fact, Indigenous peoples honoured their treaties, and thus their participation in the resistance was negligible)."
Sarah Carter, Ours By Every Law of Right and Justice
"The great project of nation building, attendant on the building of the railway to British Columbia, was undertaken at a lasting cost to Canada's First Nations."
Dominic Hardy, Annie Gérin and Lora Carney
“It is a great loss to Canadian knowledge that, with the exception of Riel, western Native peoples were not able to tell us in their own written words the encounters and the facts of the invasion processes as these things happened to them.”
Emma LaRocque, When the Other is Me. Native Resistance Discourse 1850–1990
John A. Macdonald stopped at the Blackfoot Siksika Reserve just east of Calgary on July 21, 1886, during his first trip by rail across Canada. He wanted to thank Chief Crowfoot for his support during the Rebellion of 1885. Crowfoot was wearing his oldest clothes, a sign of mourning for his adopted son Poundmaker, who had died on Crowfoot's reserve on July 4 after his early release from prison. Crowfoot discussed problems faced by his people, such as the fires started by the trains passing through his reserve. Historian Ged Martin, author of John A. Macdonald: Canada's First Prime Minister, states that "the event was staged more to show Macdonald as a benign ruler than to engage with Native grievances."
Samuel Hunter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Hunter_(cartoonist)
"At eight o'clock the Indians all gathered, men, women and children, some 500 or 600. Sir John Macdonald met them here at the station. . .
Now Crowfoot stepped forward. . . bowed, took hold of Sir John's hand and called him 'another Brother in law' . . . Crowfoot reminded Sir John of the telegrams which passed between them during the rebellion last summer. Lifting his right hand and assuming a look of great solemnity, Crowfoot said 'when that telegram was sent it was sent with a good heart. . . My people are loyal and want to be friendly with the whites.'. . . I suppose you have heard that we suffered from the fires made by the railway last fall. I had difficulty saving my horses last winter, and hope something will be done to prevent the Reserve being burned over again his summer. . .
We hope that rations will not be stopped. . .
Sir John said that of course the Government expect, by their work, they would be able to raise something for themselves, and the Government expect that year after year they would raise more and more, and in the meantime, while they were doing their best, the Government would see that none of them suffered; but he urged them to work and to endeavour to raise food for themselves. . .
The presents brought by Sir John were then distributed, teas, pipes, tobacco, calico. . ."
The Regina Leader, 26 July 1886
"At Gleichen the Indians assembled in force, and a great pow-wow was held in our honor. . . The Indians were marshaled under Crowfoot. They were gorgeous in war paint and feathers, with the exception of Crowfoot. He was in mourning for Poundmaker, who had recently died, and for that reason appeared in undress, which consisted of a little more than a dirty blanket round his loins. The Indians began by smoking a filthy-looking pipe, which they passed from one to another, each warrior merely taking whiff or two.
Crowfoot, being invited to state his grievances, began by alluding to the prairie fires caused by sparks from the railway engines, against the continuance of which he strongly protested. He then passed on to the great question of food, which is the staple grievance of the Indians. . . [Crowfoot] said that his people were originally happy and free with plenty of food at all times., that the white man had come in, taken their land, killed off the buffalo, thus depriving them of their means to live, and so forth. . . Crowfoot went on to protest his loyalty, which he had already proved in the rising of 1885. . . Sir John . . . provided a banquet for the occasion together with the present of pipes, tea and tobacco, this picturesque gathering terminated."
Sir Joseph Pope, [Sir John A. Macdonald's private secretary], Sir John A's First and Only Trip to the West, Maclean's Magazine, 2 January 1960.
[This account is drawn from Pope's diaries and other reflections.]
"The fact that the period when many of these policies [helping First Nations people become farmers] were getting under way, 1883-1890, was among the worst climatically in prairie history compounded the problem."
J. R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens
"In the decade after 1885, government policies made it virtually impossible for reserve agriculture to succeed because the farmers were prevented from using the technology required for agricultural activity in the west . . .Indian agriculture was killed, it did not fail."
Sara Carter, Lost Harvests