North-West Territories

“ Ere passing from the subject, I cannot refrain from alluding to the Half-breed population of the North-West Territories. Those people are mainly of French Canadian descent, though there are a few of Scotch blood in the territories. Their influence with the Indian population is extensive. In Manitoba there is a large population of French Metis and Scotch Half-breeds, and they are proud of their mixed blood. This race is an important factor with regard to all North-West questions. ”

“ Till within the last half century, indeed, the “North-West Territories” were held by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and as agriculture and fur trading are hardly compatible industries, it was not to the interest of this powerful fur trading corporation to advertise the agricultural possibilities of the country, nor to set right the popular misconception of British North America as a land of nothing but snow and ice. It is quite true that it has snow and ice in plenty ”

“ If a general famine came upon the Indians the charity of the Government would come into exercise. I admitted the importance of steps being taken to preserve the buffalo, and assured them that it would be considered by the Governor-General and Council of the North-West Territories, to see if a wise law could be framed such as could be carried out and obeyed.
The three Chiefs and their head men then signed the treaty, and the medals and flags were distributed, when Mr. Christie intimated that he was ready to make the payments. ”

“ The famous Royal North West Mounted Police of Canada, whose record constitutes a strikingly romantic chapter in the history of Canada, was called into being in 1873 to preserve British law and order in the vast wildernesses lying between the Great Lakes and the mountain ranges of British Columbia. The newly-formed Dominion of Canada had but recently acquired these huge preserves from the Hudson’s Bay Company, subsequently to convert them from the Northwest Territories into the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. ”

“ The extremely fertile and virgin soil of the vast region occupied by Manitoba, the North-West Territories, and British Columbia—half the size of Europe, and lying between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean—has now been provided by British Canadian enterprise with a complete network of railways, bringing it, so soon as Atlantic communication by Nova Scotia and Newfoundland has been improved, to within fourteen days' steam of Liverpool.
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Capital and immigration are alone needed for their development. ”

“ The Indians of Canada have, owing to the manner in which they were dealt with for generations by the Hudson's Bay Company, the former rulers of these vast territories, an abiding confidence in the Government of the Queen, or the Great Mother, as they style her. ”

“ In the West, American traders poured into the land, and, freighted with fire-water, purchased their peltries and their horses, and impoverished the tribes. In the East, white men took possession of the soil and made for themselves homes, and as time went on steamboats were placed on the inland waters--surveyors passed through the territories--and the "speaking wires," as the Indian calls the telegraph, were erected. ”

“ That you should write to Yellow Quill declining to entertain his demands for the large reserve but offering to them a reserve including the "Eagle's Nest" on the north side of the river, and laid off in the terms of the treaty, with the land comprised in the one hundred and sixty acres for each family, surrounded by the belt mentioned in the treaty, in the manner suggested in the enclosed rough sketch "B," reserving the rights of navigation and access to the river. The land is of inferior quality to that already offered them. ”

“ Eventually, the Indians were made to comprehend the extent of land they were really entitled to, but the Governor intimated that the land was for all, and that he would divide the band into three, each with a Chief and councillors, and that he would give each band a portion of the whole number of acres, proportionate to their numbers--the Bear at the Round Plain, the White Mud Indians at their place of residence, and the Yellow Quill band wherever they might select, in unoccupied territory. After long consultations among themselves the Indians accepted the proposal. ”

“ I want the Governor to give us somebody to build our houses, we cannot manage it ourselves, for my own part you see my crippled hand. It is true the Governor says he takes the responsibility on himself in granting the extra requests of the Indians, but let him consider on the quality of the land he has already treated for. There is no farming land whatever at the north-west angle, and he goes by what he has down there. What I want, as he has said, is twenty-five dollars to each Chief and to his head men twenty dollars. ”

“ In the old provinces of Canada from which I came we have many Indians, they are growing in numbers and are as a rule happy and prosperous; for a hundred years red and white hands have been clasped together in peace. ”

“ I think that a census of the numbers of these should be procured, and while I would not be disposed to recommend their being brought under the treaties, I would suggest that land should be assigned to them, and that on their settling down, if after an examination into their circumstances, it should be found necessary and expedient, some assistance should be given them to enable them to enter upon agricultural operations."
FUTURE OF THE INDIANS
And now I come, to a very important question, What is to be the future of the Indian population of the North-West? I believe it to be a hopeful one. ”

“ Australasia.—As the sphere of the census operations in Canada has been gradually spreading from the small beginnings on the east coast to the immense territories of the north-west, so, in the island continent, colonization, first concentrated in the south-east, has extended along the coasts and thence into the interior, except in the northern region. ”

“ The country on the upper part of the Bow River is better adapted for settlement than most of that included in the Blackfeet reserve, consequently the Commissioners deemed it advisable to agree that a belt on the south side of the river should be exempt from general occupation for ten years, particularly as the Indians set great value on the concession. ”

“ WHEREAS, divers of Her Majesty's Subjects and others have, by the Licence and Consent of Her Majesty, resorted to and settled on certain wild and unoccupied Territories on the North-West Coast of North America, commonly known by the Designation of New Caledonia, and from and after the passing of this act to be named British Columbia, and the Islands adjacent, for Mining and other purposes; it is it is desirable to make some temporary Provision for the Civil Government of such Territories, until permanent Settlements shall be thereupon established, and the Number of Colonists increased ”

“ Mr. Reid will pay the Norway House and Cross Lake Indians, and will ascertain the intentions of the Norway House Indians as to the time of their removal to Fisher River, of which I am unadvised.
7th. Mr. ”

“ The government of the North-west, as an 'annexe' to Canada, possesses advantages of contiguity and similarity of ideas on the part of Canadians and the probable settlers. Canada, it will be said, has a good and responsible Government, and why not now extend its machinery to the 1,300 miles between the height of land and the Rocky Mountains? ”

“ Canada confidently anticipates at least a million settlers from among these ranks. They would be particularly qualified for the order of life required for the hardy pioneer of that North-West defined by Mr. Watson Griffin as lying north of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean. They would be prepared to bring to this rigorous and exacting part of the country a hardy vigour and invincible courage in the conquering of nature in a degree quite in excess of that now demanded in the more settled regions. ”

“ If the plans for improving the communications which have been suggested should ever be developed, the valley of Red River would be reached without much difficulty, and land as good as that in the unsettled portions of Iowa and Minnesota would be opened to the British emigrant.
In the valleys of the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine, Canada possesses a vast north-west of her own, enjoying a mild climate, which contains, according to one of the witnesses whose opinion is cited by the Committee, 500,000 square miles of fertile land, capable of sustaining a population of nearly 30,000,000 of people. ”

“ By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.
Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. ”

“ This is the garden region of the Canadian Northwest for wheat-growing and cattle-grazing, and it stretches in almost 486 limitless expanse a fertile empire far northward to Edmonton and Prince Albert, with branch railways leading up there, the rich black soils testifying the wealth in the land. At Regina is the capital of the Northwest Territory, three hundred and fifty-seven miles west of Winnipeg, the headquarters of the Canadian "North West Mounted Police," a superb body of one thousand picked men who control the Indians and maintain order in the Northwest Territory. ”

“ On their stations at the Ord River these pioneers have been brought into most unpleasant contact with the natives. As we have shown in our history, the natives in the north-west are most treacherous and difficult to control. ”

“ It is understood that, in surrendering to Her Majesty all the rights, etc., of the Company in any part of British North America not comprised in Rupert's Land, Canada, or British Columbia, the Company are to retain the posts they actually occupy in the North­West Territory. ”

“ The Colony is now prosperous, the laws respected, the natives in the settled districts submissive, and in the North they supply labor for the pastoral settlements and the pearl fishery, and are probably progressing towards civilization by their residence among the settlers. In other districts they are decreasing in number, and lingering out a poor and degraded existence.
There is no trustworthy estimate of the number of the aboriginal inhabitants of West Australia. In the settled districts they may average one to ten of the white population. ”

“ A victory won not a century ago gratified the animosities of the American colonies, and added to the countries ruled by the Sovereign of Great Britain a tract of territory thrice the size of his kingdom. From Labrador to the western limit of Lake Superior, a line drawn east and west within the boundaries of Canada, is 1600 miles long; but the breadth of the country from its Southern frontiers to the ill-defined boundary on the North, is but 225 miles. This vast region is divided into Upper and Lower Canada. ”

“ DENNIS JOSEPH DOHERTY, M.L.C.
AUSTRALIA is so young and so large that there are immense areas of her country unsettled, and even unexplored. In the north of Western Australia, in the Northern Territory of South Australia, and in remote Queensland, there are expansive stretches still hid in their primal gloom. No white man has trod these wastes, no pathfinder has picked his curious way through these tropical regions; the natives—the children of the bush—remain lords of their primeval birthplaces. ”

“ The British Provinces of North America, especially Canada West,—formerly called Upper Canada,—in climate, soil, productions, and the usual prospects for internal improvements, are equal, if not superior, to any northern part of the continent. And for these very reasons, aside from their contiguity to the northern part of the United States,—and consequent facility for the escape of the slaves from the South,—we certainly should prefer them as a place of destination. ”

“ There was no man in the Western Territories to whom it was not familiar. There was no traveller who crossed the lonely waste but was glad of it, and would go twenty miles out of his way to rest a night on a corn-husk bed which Jen Galbraith’s hands had filled, to eat a meal that she had prepared, and to hear Peter Galbraith’s tales of early days on the plains, when buffalo were like clouds on the horizon, when Indians were many and hostile, and when men called the great western prairie a wedge of the American desert. ”

“ Two years hence the journey I have undertaken will be an easy one for all to accomplish throughout its length, while at present the facilities of railway and steam accommodation only suffice for half of it. For a Canadian, personal knowledge of the North-West is indispensable. To be ignorant of the North-West is to be ignorant of the greater portion of our country. ”

“ It has not been thought important to establish regular governments in all the provinces, so called. Such governments are established only in the Canadas, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland. The Canadas consist of Upper and Lower, or Canada West and Canada East, and embrace the principal amount of the population and productive resources of that whole northern world. ”

“ The North-West Frontier Province is, with the exception of Behar, Chota Nagpur and Orissa, the youngest of the provinces into which British India is divided, while in respect of population and extent of territory administered according to British law, it is also the smallest. ”