Endless Warfare Part 3 (1819-1924)

 

In the United States the Indian Wars to the East of the Mississippi were slowly coming to an end, particularly after the death of Tecumseh which marked the end of the battle for control of the Old Northwest.  As the country continued to expand to the West it kept pushing the remaining Indians further and further from their traditional lands in order to make room for settlers. In 1818 Florida was ceded to the U.S. from Spain and this precipitated the Seminole Wars which lasted until 1842 when all of these people were forcibly removed to make room for settlers.

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law in 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with Native American tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for white settlement of their ancestral lands. The Act was strongly supported by southern and northwestern settler populations, but of course opposed by Native tribes who didn’t want to give up their cultivated farmland.

In the end 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed by the United States government in a march to an area in the west that had been designated Indian Territory and later became part of Oklahoma. It later became known as the Trail of Tears because of the thousands who died from exposure, disease and starvation in the process before reaching their destination.

Tribes from the Great Lakes and Northeastern Woodlands including members of the Western Lake Confederacy (Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Kickapoo, Iowa, Sac, Fox, and Potawatomi) and the Council of Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi) were also moved to the Indian Territory.

By 1842 most of the Indian Wars east of the Mississippi had been settled but, for the next 100 years, the conflicts would be west of the Mississippi and last from 1811-1924. 

In 1861 the American Civil War (1861-1865) broke out over slavery. While slavery had always existed in British North America it had been abolished in Upper Canada in 1793 and in 1834 Britain had abolished it throughout the Empire, freeing 800,000 slaves, mostly in the Caribbean.

In the U.S. the war was between the Union states that remained loyal to the federal union, or “the North” and the Confederacy states that voted to secede, or “the South”. The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into territories acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-Amercian War. On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, four million of the 32 million Americans were enslaved black people, almost all of them living in the South. 

Slavery was the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850's. The Republican Party was determined to prevent any spread of slavery to the territories, which, after they were admitted as states, would give the North greater representation in Congress and in the Electoral College. Many Southern leaders had threatened secession if the Republican candidate, Lincoln, won the 1860 election. After Lincoln won, many Southern leaders felt that disunion was their only option, fearing that the loss of representation would hamper their ability to promote pro-slavery acts and policies.

Slavery was the main cause of disunion. Slavery had been a controversial issue during the framing of the Constitution but had been left unsettled. The issue of slavery had confounded the nation since its inception, and increasingly separated the United States into a slaveholding South and a free North. The issue was exacerbated by the rapid territorial expansion of the country, which repeatedly brought to the fore the issue of whether each new territory should be slaveholding or free. The issue had dominated politics for decades leading up to the war.

Confederate soldiers fought the war primarily to protect a Southern society of which slavery was an integral part. From the anti-slavery perspective, the issue was primarily whether slavery was an anachronistic evil incompatible with republicanism. The strategy of the anti-slavery forces was containment, to stop the expansion of slavery and thereby put it on a path to ultimate extinction. The slaveholding interests in the South denounced this strategy as infringing upon their constitutional rights. Southern whites believed that the emancipation of slaves would destroy the South's economy, due to the large amount of capital invested in slaves and fears of integrating the ex-slave black population. 

Manifest destiny heightened the conflict over slavery, as each new territory acquired had to face the thorny question of whether to allow or disallow slavery. Between 1803 and 1854, the United States achieved a vast expansion of territory through purchase, negotiation, and conquest. At first, the new states carved out of these territories entering the union were apportioned equally between slave and free states but pro and anti-slavery forces collided over the territories west of the Mississippi.

The Mexican-American War and its aftermath was a key territorial event in the lead-up to the war. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo finalized the conquest of northern Mexico west to California and slaveholding interests looked forward to expanding into these lands.

During 1861–1862 in the war's Western Theatre, the Union made significant permanent gains but in the war's Eastern Theatre the conflict was inconclusive. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal, declaring all persons held as slaves in states in rebellion "forever free."

To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864.

Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his march to the sea. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond.

The Civil War effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, after having abandoned Petersburg and Richmond. Confederate generals throughout the Confederate army followed suit.

By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves.

As American settlers and fur trappers first spread into the western United States territories, they established various trails leading from Missouri. These included the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, the California Trail and later the Bozeman Trail.

Initially relations were generally peaceful between American settlers and Indians but, as the combination of various gold rushes, the end of the Mexican-American War (1848) the U.S. Homestead Act (1862) and the Civil War (1865) brought more and more settlers and miners into the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, conflicts over the land and resources led to warfare. 

During the Amercian Civil War, Army units were withdrawn to fight the war in the East. They were replaced by the volunteer infantry and cavalry raised by the states of California and Oregon, western territorial governments, and local militias. These units fought the Indians (who mostly sided with the Confederacy) and kept open communications with the east, holding the West for the Union and defeating the Confederate attempt to capture the New Mexico Territory.

Many tribes fought the American settlers, and between 1811-1924 there were hundreds of battles between the settlers and soldiers, and various Indian Nations, with thousands dying in the process. In Texas it was with the Cherokees and Comanches, in the Pacific Northwest it was with the Yakama and Cayuse, and the Rogue River people. In the Southwest it was with the Navajo and Apache and in the Great Basin it was with the Utes and Nez Perce. In California, Oregon & Nevada it was with the Shoshone and other members of the Snake Indian confederacy, and in Colorado and Nebraska it was with the Cheyanne.

But it was the Sioux of the Northern Plains and the Apache of the Southwest that waged the most aggressive warfare, led by resolute, militant leaders such as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse.

The Sioux were relatively new arrivals on the Plains, as they had been sedentary farmers in the Great Lakes region previously. They moved west, displacing other Indian tribes and becoming feared warriors.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, national policy called for all Indians to either assimilate into the American population as citizens, or to live peacefully on reservations. Raids and wars between tribes were not allowed, and armed Indian bands off a reservation were the responsibility of the Army to round up and return.

Nonetheless the Great Sioux War erupted in 1876-1877 (also known as the Black Hills War) and was a series of battles and negotiations that occurred between an alliance of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States and was conducted by the Lakota Sioux under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The cause of the war was the desire of the US government to obtain ownership of the Black Hills which was Indian territory. The conflict began after repeated violations of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie once gold was discovered in the Black Hills. As settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands, the Sioux and the Cheyenne refused to cede ownership. One of its famous battles was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated the 7th Cavalry, led by General George Armstrong Custer. Often known as Custer's Last Stand, it is the most storied of the many encounters between the US Army and mounted Plains Indians. Despite the Indian victory, the Americans subsequently leveraged national resources to force the Indians to surrender, primarily by attacking and destroying their encampments and property, ending with the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. 

Sitting Bull

By 1890, settlement in the American West had reached sufficient population density that the frontier line had disappeared and the Census Bureau released a bulletin declaring the closing of the frontier as there was no longer a clear line of advancing settlement. The West was won and the Indians were now all on reservations and/or facing assimilation. Nonetheless, following the surrender of Geronimo in 1886, the Apache wars continued until 1924 which was the last raid into U.S. territory by a group of Apache warriors into Arizona.

Canadian Reserves

 

After nearly 300 years of continuous conflict in North America, from the start of the Beaver wars in 1610, the settlers and colonists had finally won. 40,000 years of Indigenous history, culture and way of life was mostly extinguished and almost all of their land was taken away. While the slaughter was much greater in the U.S., where the remaining people ended up on reservations, in Canada they were put on reserves, but the end result was the same. 

American Reservations

The amount of land set aside as reserves for the First Nations amounts to less than 0.4% of the total Canadian landmass. The combined landmass of all the First Nations reserves in Canada is less than half the landmass of the Navaho Reservation in the U.S. But, while there are basically no reservations east of the Mississippi, the Canadian reserves are spread across the entire country.

New Developments On The North And West Coasts (1824-1864)

 

Europeans had been searching for a shortcut to Asia from Europe by sea since the 15th century. By the mid-19th century numerous exploratory expeditions had been mounted, with most of them led by Britain. These voyages, when successful, added to the sum of European geographic knowledge about the Western Hemisphere, particularly North America. As that knowledge grew, exploration gradually shifted towards the Arctic.

16^th and 17^th century voyagers who made geographic discoveries about North America included Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Henry Hudson and William Baffin. The establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest company led to further exploration of the Canadian coastlines, its interior and the adjacent Arctic seas. In the 18th century, explorers of this region included Henry Kelsey, James Knight, Pierre La Verendrye, Anthony Henday, Christopher Middleton, Samuel Hearne, James Cook, Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, David Thompson, and George Vancouver. By the beginning of the 19th century their discoveries had conclusively proven that no Northwest Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans existed on either the west or east coast.

In 1804, Sir John Barrow, who became Second Secretary of the Admiralty, began pushing for the Royal Navy to find a Northwest Passage over the top of Canada. Over the next 40 years he organized a series of expeditions towards the North Pole by explorers that included John Ross, David Buchan, William Edward Parry, Frederick William Beechey, James Clark Ross, George Back, Peter Warren Dease, and Thomas Simpson.  Among those explorers was John Franklin, who led a disastrous overland expedition along the Canadian Arctic coast, in 1819–22 and a more successful one with John Richardson in 1825–27.

By 1845 the combined discoveries of all these expeditions had reduced the unknown parts of the Canadian Arctic that might contain a Northwest Passage to an area of about 70,000 sq miles. It was into this unexplored area that the next expedition was to sail, heading west through Lancaster Sound, then west and south, however ice, land and other obstacles might allow, with the goal of finding a Northwest Passage. The distance to be navigated was roughly 1,040 miles.

Franklin was assigned to traverse the last un-navigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and, in 1845, he set out with two ships, Erebus and Terror. Unfortunately, he met with disaster when his ships became icebound near King William Island/Victoria Strait and all crew members eventually perished. It would take until 1906 when Roald Amundsen was able to complete the journey that the North-West Passage would finally be discovered.

While all the exploration of the North was going on, fur trade competition between Russia, various U.S. merchants, and the HBC was in full swing on the west coast. Russia controlled most of the coast of what is now Alaska and they also tried to expand further south to the 45:50 latitude but, in 1824, they settled with the U.S. that their territory would end at the 54:40 latitude. South of Alaska, however, the coast was open to free trade and there was fierce competition between HBC and the Americans. The headquarters of HBC was Fort Vancouver, built in 1824 on the Columbia River at the junction of the Williamette River.

Fort Vancouver

To strengthen its coastal trade and drive away the American traders HBC built a series of fortified trading posts, the first of which was Fort Langley, established in 1827 on the Fraser River about 50 km  from the river's mouth. The next was Fort Simpson, founded in 1831 at the mouth of the Nass River followed by Fort McLoughlin (1833), Fort Stikine (1840), Fort Durham (1840), and Fort Victoria (1843). However, by 1841 with the sea otter basically extinct, the American traders abandoned the North West Coast, and the west coast fur trade competition was over.

Under the banner of Manifest Destiny, successive American presidents continued to push for more and more territory in the North American continent so the U.S. could extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. By the mid 19^th century, everything had been either purchased, annexed, or ceded with the exception of the Oregon Territory.

In 1846 the Oregon Treaty extended the border between Britain and the U.S. along the 49^th parallel from the Rockies to the Pacific ceding Oregon Country to the U.S. but giving all of Vancouver Island to Britain. With Fort Vancouver now in American territory it was no longer profitable to operate so HBC closed it down and moved operations to Fort Victoria. In 1849 Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands were made into a colony and put under the administration of HBC and the Governor James Douglas. 

In 1856 gold was discovered in the Thompson River by the Shuswap (Secwepemc) nation. The presence of gold was kept secret until a sample of 800 ounces was sent to San Francisco in 1857. When newspapers picked up the story it sparked the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and thousands of prospectors from the U.S. started arriving in the New Caledonia and Columbia trading districts.

James Douglas, the HBC Governor, who had no legal authority over New Caledonia or Columbia, nonetheless stationed a gunboat at the entrance of the Fraser River and collected licences from prospectors attempting to make their way upstream. To normalize its jurisdiction, and undercut any HBC claims to the resource wealth of the mainland, the districts were converted to a Crown colony in 1858 by Britain and given the name British Columbia.

Douglas was offered the governorship of the new colony, in addition to Vancouver Island, on the condition he sever his relationship with the HBC. Douglas accepted these conditions, and a knighthood.

The ongoing Indian Wars in the United States heightened American animosity towards First Nations people and even though they were in British territory they carried with them all their prejudices. In the fall of 1858, escalating tensions between the miners and the Nlaka’pamux people of the central area of the canyon broke out into the Fraser Canyon War.

The war was precipitated when a young Nlaka'pamux woman was raped by a group of American miners, in the area of Kanaka Bar. The Nlaka'pamux retaliated by killing several of them, decapitating the bodies, and dumping them into the river. They were eventually found circling in a large eddy near the town of Yale, the main commercial centre of the rush, and this alarmed the thousands of miners lining the riverbanks between Yale and Kanaka Bar.

For some time in the months leading up to this incident, tensions had risen due to increasing conflict between Indigenous people and the encroaching miners. In particular the local First Nations were upset about the destruction of the salmon run and the salmon spawning habitat, owing to the miner's destructive placer mining techniques and use of mercury. They were also upset at being displaced by the mostly American miners who gave no thought to their established settlements and thought they could simply move the First Nations people out of the way like they were accustomed to doing in the U.S. Both sides begain raiding each other's camps which led to more bloodshed and death.

Due to the reputation of the Nlaka'pamux, the riverbanks north of Yale were emptied, as miners in the thousands fled south to the relative safety of Spuzzum and Yale. There the miners held meetings and six regiments of mostly Americans were hastily organized. At Camchin, the ancient Nlaka'pamux "capital" at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, the assembled leaders of the Nlaka'pamux and allies from the Shuswap and Okanagan peoples also held council. Both sides had leaders that wanted to wipe each other out completely but, in the end, peace was agreed thanks to the good relations Chief Cxpentlum had with Governor James Douglas and the moderating influence of Harry Snyder, one of the American leaders.

Barkerville

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush was short lived but, in 1862, the Cariboo Gold Rush began and it was much bigger, with many towns being developed including Barkerville, the most famous.

Unlike the Fraser Canyon, the mining population of the Cariboo Gold Rush was largely British and Canadian, including 4,000 who were Chinese. The absence of Americans was probably due to the fact the Civil War had started. By the time the Cariboo Rush broke out there was more active interest in the Gold Colony (as British Columbia was often referred to) in the United Kingdom and Canada and there had also been time for more British and Canadians to get there.

Continuing his service as Governor, Douglas ordered the construction of the Cariboo Wagon Road. Designed to replace the original Wagon Road which was a combination of wagon roadway and lake paddlewheelers that ran via Harrison, Lilloet, Anderson, and Seton Lakes, this engineering feat ran 400 miles from Fort Yale to Barkerville through extremely hazardous canyon territory. The Cariboo Wagon Road was also called the "Queen's Highway" and the "Great North Road" and its first version was completed in 1862.

In 1864 there was another bad run-in with Europeans and First Nations in the B.C. interior and it became known as the Chilcotin War. The dispute started in 1864 when a road crew entered Tsilhqot'in territory, without permission, to construct a road up from Bute Inlet, and it escalated into grievances over unpaid wages, working conditions, and lack of food. More importantly, the Tsilhqot'in  believed they were being deliberately infected with smallpox in order to take over their land (a suspicion that was validated following the 1862 epidemic that killed thousands and was later admitted to by agents of the company that they were using infected blankets to spread the disease). The Tsilhqot'in declared themselves at war and vowed to expel all settlers until satisfactory arrangements could be made with the Crown. Britain had only recently, because of the Fraser Canyon gold rush, created the colony of British Columbia in 1858, and no officials had yet met with the Tsilhqot'in who still considered themselves a sovereign people. 

Initially 14 men working for the company on the road crew were killed but another four settlers were later killed as well. The new Governor of the Colony of B.C. Frederick Seymour then raised three militias to invade the territory and capture the leaders. These forces threatened the Tsilhqot'in with extermination and burned their homes and fishing camps in an attempt to get them to give up their leaders. Another settler leader was also killed before a peace conference was arranged with the promise of immunity for all who attended. A party of 8 Tsilhqot'in leaders arrived at the conference and were promptly ambushed and taken into custody. At a trial held in Quesnel, five were found guilty of murder, even though they argued they were waging war between sovereign nations, and were hanged on October 26, 1864. A 6th leader was later tried and hanged as well.

In 2014 the B.C. government exonerated the 6 leaders for any crime or wrong doing and in 2018 the Federal government also exonerated them and made a formal apology. October 26th is a now a national holiday of remembrance amongst the Tsilhqot'in. 

The Chilcotin War might have been avoided if James Douglas was still in office but in 1864 he had just retired. His relations with First Nations peoples were mixed. On the one hand, Douglas' wife was Cree, he had established many close business and personal relationships with Indigenous peoples as a fur trader, he sought to conclude modest treaties (the Douglas Treaties) with First Nations on southern Vancouver Island, and he helped them initially secure large areas of reserved land. On the other hand, Douglas supplied Washington Territory's Governor Isaac Stevens with arms and other supplies to assist the US government in its conflict with Native American tribes.

Governor James Douglas

 

The Fur Trade Competition Comes To An End (1784-1821)

After the 1763 Treaty of Paris, with France having to hand New France over to the British, the French fur trade network immediately disappeared. But, in 1779, the old Montreal-based overland trade network was taken over by a new group of pedlars, this time British ones, but still using French voyageurs as well as Iroquois. The resulting North West Company (NWC) rapidly rose to a position of dominance by gaining a de facto monopoly of the trade in the fur-rich area around Lake Athabasca.

To maintain its Athabasca monopoly the NWC competed, at a loss if necessary, with its opponents on the Saskatchewan River, around Lake Winnipeg and north of the Great Lakes. On the North Saskatchewan River the rival companies leapfrogged westward past each other’s posts in an attempt to gain a commercial advantage with First Nations. Intensive competition with the NWC spilled beyond Rupert’s Land into the Mackenzie drainage basin and the Pacific slope, combining economic conflict with occasional physical violence. 

As the two trading companies continued competing for the lucrative fur trade, the Nor’Westers, as the NWC men were called, kept exploring the inland riverways, with the indispensible aid of local First Nation guides, and establishing trading settlements throughout the country. In doing so their impact on Native groups was mixed. On the one hand there was the benefit of trade goods but on the other there was the impact of Natives taking up alternative opportunities such as labourers and provisioners. There was also the disruption of established trading networks between various Native groups.

Alexander Mackenzie

In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie set out by canoe to find the Northwest Passage on the river known to local First Nations as the Dehcho and ended up in the Arctic Ocean. The river was later named after him. In 1792 he set off a second time to find the Pacific Ocean and this time succeeded after paddling along the Peace River and hiking along the established "grease trails" of the interior before reaching the Bella Coola River and thence to the ocean. Having done this, he became the first person to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico, and just missed connecting with Captain Vancouver who, at the same time, was mapping the Pacific coastline.

Simon Fraser

Simon Fraser was in charge of all the NWC operations west of the Rockies and he ended up charting most of what became British Columbia, established the first European settlements and, in 1808, was the first to explore the entire Fraser River which was named after him.

David Thompson

David Thompson was another fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer who has been described as the greatest practical land geographer the world has produced. Over the length of his career, he mapped nearly 4 million square kilometres of North America, from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific Ocean, and in 1811 became the first European to navigate the full length of the Columbia River. In 1814 he completed his great map, the product of a lifetime of exploring and surveying the interior of North America. The map covered an area stretching from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean and was so accurate that it continued to be used by the Canadian government for 100 years after its completion.

Unlike the eastern First Nations during the 17th and 18th centuries, most Indigenous groups further west had not yet had direct contact with any Europeans. But, due to extensive trading networks, European goods like metal pots, knives, and firearms were reaching the Plains People, including the Blackfoot. As the fur trade gradually moved west, the Assiniboine and Cree trading networks expanded into western territories and European goods quickly spread across the plains.

But it was the introduction of the horse that really revolutionized Plains culture. When horses were obtained, the Plains tribes rapidly integrated them into their daily lives. The horse enabled the Plains Indians to gain their subsistence with relative ease from the seemingly endless bison herds. No longer did they have to use buffalo jumps to capture their food supply.

Riders were able to travel faster and further in search of bison herds and could also more easily transport goods. For Plains Indians the horse became an item of prestige as well as utility and provided for a much richer material world than that of their ancestors. The Plains Indians were extremely fond of their horses and the lifestyle they made possible. 

Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump

People in the southwest began acquiring horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico.  By 1659, the Navajo from northwestern New Mexico were raiding the Spanish colonies to steal horses, and by 1664, the Apache were trading captives from other tribes to the Spanish for horses. But the real beginning of the horse culture of the plains began with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico when the Pueblos overthrew the Spanish and captured thousands of horses and other livestock. For the next 12 years, until the Spanish were able to reconquer the area, the Pueblos traded many of these horses north to the various Plains Indians groups and their distribution spread rapidly. 

As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730's, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback.The Shoshone in Wyoming had horses by about 1700 and the Blackfoot people, the most northerly of the large Plains tribes, acquired horses in the 1730s as did the Cree, Assiniboine, and Mandan. By 1770, the Plains Indians culture was mature, consisting of mounted buffalo-hunting nomads that stretched from Saskatchewan and Alberta southward to the Rio Grande.

However, within 100 years the bison would be extinct. The species' dramatic decline was a direct result of habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practiced by non-Indigenous hunters, increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to non-Indigenous demand for bison hides and meat, and the deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples during times of conflict.

There were two principal groups of Plains people in what would become Canada, the Blackfoot Confederacy (Niitsitapi) made up of the Blackfoot, Peigan, and Blood people and the Iron Confederacy made up of the Cree-Assiniboine (Nehiyawak) people. The Blackfoot were enemies of the Crow, Cheyenne and Sioux, but their most mighty and dangerous enemy, was the political/military/trading alliance of the Iron Confederacy and their Plains Ojibwe and Metis allies.

Historically, the Blackfoot Confederacy were nomadic bison hunters and trout fishermen, who ranged across large areas of the northern Great Plains of western North America, specifically the semi-arid short-grass prairie region. They followed the bison herds as they migrated back and forth across what is now the United States and Canada border. Having acquired horses and firearms from white traders and their Cree and Assiniboine traders, the Blackfoot used these to expand their territory at the expense of neighboring tribes.

The Iron Confederacy on the other hand rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade where they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of European goods, particularly guns and ammunition, to other Indigenous nations and the flow of furs to the HBC and NWC trading posts. Its peoples also played a major part in the bison hunt and the pemmican trade which supplied fur traders with food. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds eventually sapped the power of the Iron Confederacy after the 1860's, and it could no longer act as a barrier to settler expansion.

Until their extinction, bison/buffalo hunting was an activity that was fundamental to the economy and society of the Plains Indians and Metis who inhabited the vast grasslands of the interior plains of North America. As bison hunters, the Metis became important suppliers of food for the traders, who didn't have time to stop and hunt for food as they raced against time in their canoes. The primary food was pemmican, a food made of fat, dried meat, and berries like saskatoons, strawberries, or blueberries. 

Pemmican stored well and provided highly concentrated nutrition. There were approximately 2,000-3,000 calories in every pound of pemmican. This food supply literally fuelled the fur trade so that traders could move northwest into the Athabasca region from the Great Lakes and Hudson's Bay. Indigenous women were key to this success, as they were the ones that made the pemmican. Together the Métis bison hunters and their families created a valuable economic niche in the fur trade economy.

A key invention of the Metis people was the Red River cart. Made with only wood and buffalo hide these highly versatile carts could carry up to 1,000 lbs. and even be floated across rivers. With the cart the Metis were not restricted by canoe to do their bison hunting and this revolutionized the commercial bison hunt. Until the coming of the CPR these carts were the primary conveyance vehicle for transporting just about anything across the prairies.

In 1812 the HBC granted Lord Selkirk a large section of its land (74 million acres) for the purpose of establishing an agricultural colony of impoverished people from Scotland. This was part of the Rupert’s Land concession where HBC had been granted a monopoly. However, there were already people living there; First Nations, Metis, and NWC traders, and they disputed the HBC claim to sovereignty of the land.

This new invasion, the Selkirk settlement or Red River Colony as it became known, lay in the middle of the already established area called the Red River Valley where there was a major concentration of Métis people, who had a thriving economy supplying the NWC fur traders. This Métis presence also straddled the NWC canoe routes and various forts. The influx of strangers on the lands surrounding and intersecting an already established Métis Red River settlement created great tension and challenges as the surveyors and the new settlers did not recognize any Métis claims to the land. As a result, the Métis and Nor’Westers became an allied front in their economic and land struggles against HBC.

When the first of the Red River Colony settlers arrived, it was too late to plant crops and they had to hunt buffalo to survive. Selkirk Governor, Miles MacDonnell, turned to the local Indigenous populations of Ojibwa and Métis to supply the new influx of helpless settlers with meat, grease, and pemmican. In early 1814 Governor Macdonnell issued the Pemmican Proclamation which outlawed the sale of pemmican and other foodstuffs to fur traders. This development did not go over well with the Métis or the Nor’Westers, who were both economically dependent on the pemmican. Red River pemmican was essential to the NWC and without it they couldn’t feed their employees. Governor Macdonnell also started impounding NWC supplies and ordered the NWC to abandon all their posts.

The NWC and Metis retaliated by burning down settler’s homes, stealing their cattle, and generally intimidating them so they would leave. The strategy worked and once everyone was gone by the summer of 1815, they then set fire to Fort Douglas and all of its buildings. Over the winter HBC rebuilt Fort Douglas but, in the following summer, the Nor’Westers and their Metis allies launched another attack.

Referred to as the battle of Seven Oaks, 21 Red River settlers and HBC employees were killed while only one NWC employee died. The Metis took control of Fort Douglas and held it until the following year. The Métis success in this conflict contributed to the development of Métis nationalism. Between 1816-1821 there were an endless series of raids between HBC and NWC on each other’s forts and trading posts with the occasional resulting death.

In 1818 the Pemmican War trials began in Montreal and included 38 cases of murder, 60 cases of grand larceny and 13 cases of arson. Lord Selkirk himself was tried on charges of theft, false imprisonment and resisting arrest. Hostilities finally ended in 1821 when declining profits and government pressure forced a merger of NWC with HBC. The competition was now over.

The fur trade had a profound affect on Indigenous communities. The introduction of European goods such as metal knives, axes, and cooking pots made cooking, cutting trees, and butchering animals much easier. The convenience of rifles and ammunition made hunting easier but also promoted more deadly warfare and the people eventually lost the art of making bows and arrows, making them dependant on obtaining powder and gun repairs from the trading posts. With the introduction of the horse, canoe technology and paddling skills also began to wane.

At the time of the merger, the amalgamated HBC consisted of 97 trading posts that had belonged to the North West Company and 76 that belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. When the competition between both companies came to an end, the combined posts were reduced to 52 for efficiency and to eliminate redundancy. This of course had an adverse effect on Indigenous groups who had established themselves in permanent communities near the trading posts. But, unlike the U.S. which was always wanting to slaughter the First Nations and take away their land, in Canada the First Nations were considered crucial to the maintenance of the fur trade as both customers and suppliers, and the HBC looked after them and made sure they didn't starve when times were lean.

In the name of efficiency the canoe was replaced with the York Boat on major river corridors. Because these boats could carry more at a time, it reduced the numbers of people needed, and the sturdy, locally built York Boat became the preferred mode of transportation. The boat’s heavy wood construction was a significant advantage when travelling waterways where the bottom or sides of the hull were likely to strike rocks or ice. Canoes, which were usually constructed with soft hulls of birch bark or animal hide, were vulnerable to tears and punctures. The solid, all-wood hull of the York boat could simply bounce off or grind past obstacles that could easily inflict fatal damage on a soft-hulled vessel. That advantage became a disadvantage, though, when portaging was necessary because it became a brutal form of work. A York boat was far too heavy to carry and the crew had to cut a path through the brush, lay down poplar rollers, and drag the boat overland.

York Boat

Competition between the English and the French had been disastrous for the beaver population and, by the 1800’s, they were hunted almost to extinction in many parts of the country. The status of beavers changed dramatically as it went from being a source of food and clothing for Indigenous peoples to a vital good for exchange with the Europeans.

During the competitive period of 1779 to 1821, the value of furs tended to go up while the value of goods declined. These prices were an incentive to over-trap. After 1821, the newly formed company had to address the resource shortages created by the fierce competition, and efforts to manage and conserve beaver populations were made. Without the fierce competition of the NWC, the HBC now was able to create and enforce stricter rules and regulations about hunting and trapping and better control the prices of the furs.