Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Indian Commissioners: Agents of the State and Indian Policy in Canada\u27s Prairie West, 1873-1932\u3c/i\u3e by E. Brian Titley

E. Brian Titley\u27s The Indian Commissioners makes a fine contribution to Great Plains history and, in Canadian studies, the shaping of western Indian policy. The case of Canada\u27s Indian Commissioners, appointed from 1873 to 1909 and again between 1920 and 1932, is worthy of a single study. Titley\u27s thesis is solidly argued: though responsible for putting into practice Ottawa\u27s policies, the five Indian commissioners in the history of the service retained some latitude in carrying them out. Beneficiaries of party patronage, and often enjoying the confidence of either the Prime Minister or various Ministers of Interior, they had backing enough to put their own stamp on policies of special concern to them. These included the treaty processes they oversaw and in some ways shaped, Native residential and industrial schooling, assimilation efforts, and changing reserve land policies

Conservation, Science and Canada's Fur Farming Industry, 1913-1945

Fur farming gained its greatest popularity during the 1920s, when nature conservation became prominent at the national level in Canada. Promoters claimed that fur farming, as a thoroughly modern answer to the apparent and inevitable exhaustion of nature, would eventually replace the wild trapping industry altogether. By the 1940s, however, the fur farm was in decline. Farmers operating small-scale enterprises faced problems with the management of their stock and much higher costs than did trappers. Economic considerations aside, promoters never managed to separate fur from the mystery of the wilderness. The new demand for ‘‘genuine’’ fur in the 1940s market might indicate that Canadian society believed that the north and its wilderness were no longer imperiled.L’élevage des animaux à fourrure n’a jamais été aussi populaire que durant les années 1920, la conservation de la nature étant alors devenue une question d’intérêt national. Ses tenants affirmaient que l’élevage d’animaux à fourrure, une réponse tout à fait moderne à l’épuisement manifeste et inévitable de la nature, remplacerait un jour l’industrie du piégeage tout entière. Mais au tournant des années 1940, l’élevage d’animaux à fourrure était sur son déclin. Les petits éleveurs avaient de la difficulté à gérer leur cheptel et faisaient face à des coûts beaucoup plus élevés que ceux des trappeurs. Toutefois, nonobstant les facteurs économiques, les tenants de l’élevage ne réussirent jamais à rompre le lien entre la fourrure et le mystère de la nature. Le regain de la demande de fourrures « authentiques » sur le marché des années 1940 révèle peut-être que la société canadienne ne voyait plus de menace planer sur le Nord et sa vie sauvage

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Indian Commissioners: Agents of the State and Indian Policy in Canada\u27s Prairie West, 1873-1932\u3c/i\u3e by E. Brian Titley

E. Brian Titley\u27s The Indian Commissioners makes a fine contribution to Great Plains history and, in Canadian studies, the shaping of western Indian policy. The case of Canada\u27s Indian Commissioners, appointed from 1873 to 1909 and again between 1920 and 1932, is worthy of a single study. Titley\u27s thesis is solidly argued: though responsible for putting into practice Ottawa\u27s policies, the five Indian commissioners in the history of the service retained some latitude in carrying them out. Beneficiaries of party patronage, and often enjoying the confidence of either the Prime Minister or various Ministers of Interior, they had backing enough to put their own stamp on policies of special concern to them. These included the treaty processes they oversaw and in some ways shaped, Native residential and industrial schooling, assimilation efforts, and changing reserve land policies

The Methodists\u27 Great 1869 Camp Meeting and Aboriginal Conservation Strategies in The North Saskatchewan River Valley

George McDougall, chairman of the Methodist Missions to the Indians of the Northwest Territories, kept a large, black book in which he jotted sermon notes, references to classical and biblical literature and sometimes simply his itineraries by horseback from Victoria, the primary Methodist mission in the far British northwest. Under the s tab and labeled Saskatchewan, he noted repeatedly in the 1860s the food crisis facing North Saskatchewan residents. In sum: \u27\u27A time of starvation. No buffalo. In this article I analyze a buffalo hunt which occurred in 1869. That spring, many hundreds of Cree, Assiniboine, Stoney, and Metis hunters going to the Plains were joined by a contingent of Wesleyan Methodists and their Native affiliates from Fort Edmonton, Pigeon Lake, Lac Ste. Anne, Lac La Biche, and Whitefish Lake-all located on the most northern and westerly fringes of the northern Great Plains. Their expedition and other hunts joined by Protestant or Roman Catholic missions help identify some of the strategies of competition and cooperation emerging in the western boreal and parkland regions in the midst of predicted but rapid environmental change. Missionaries of the North Saskatchewan river basin joined the multiethnic hunt of 1869 to serve both the spiritual and physical needs of their followers. The aboriginal hunting parties who had long employed cooperative hunts, however, used this occasion as a further means to open up new territories and better coordinate their efforts. It also marked a larger shift in strategies of political and social importance. Instead of following nearby herds and waiting for their seasonal migration to areas within reach of home territories, this assembly and others of the decade fell into a larger pattern of cooperation, successful or not. Milloy identified them as heavily armed migrations launched by the Cree, who for want of food were traveling with larger assemblies into traditional Blackfoot territory, not as a party of warriors, in search of plunder and glory but as hunters

Review of The Cypress Hills: An Island by Itself. By Walter Hildebrandt and Brian Hubner

The Cypress Hills, rising as outliers in the northern portion of the Missouri Coteau and dominating the mixed xeric grasslands of southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, have a vast human story of their own. They are certainly worthy of their own history book. This new edition of Hildebrandt and Hubner\u27s 1994 book has been rewritten and reshaped to retell the story of the prehistory, aboriginal, early trade, and mounted police history of the region. Originally serving as historians and guides of the Fort Walsh National Historic Site, the authors were well placed to provide it. The Cypress Hills presents a systematic overview of the archaeology of the region, its history in the context of the buffalo hunt, the brief but tumultuous whiskey trade in the hills, and the arrival of the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1874. A new chapter has been added on the experience of the Nakoda who frequented these hills, later adhered to Treaty 4, and were subsequently relocated from their chosen reserve by the apparent double-dealings of the Canadian federal government. The book has strengths and weaknesses. It can certainly provide an introduction to the history of this fascinating region. The numerous aboriginal groups that seasonally came and went from these hills are described, as well as the buffalo robes and provisions they pursued nearby. The commercialized fur and pemmican trade organized by the Hudson\u27s Bay Company and Montreal companies are also covered. There is very good detail on the expanding merchant capital and whiskey trading in Whoop-Up Country organized out of Fort Benton. One of the book\u27s best chapters is devoted to the 1873 massacre of a Nakoda camp perpetrated by Benton wolf hunters near Abe Farewell\u27s whiskey post, the famous Cypress Hills Massacre. Another overviews the arrival of the NWMP shortly after the massacre and the founding of Fort Walsh. A chapter on the treaty era includes the protracted negotiations that took place between the NWMP and Sitting Bull\u27s Wood Mountain camp

Science, streams and sport: trout conservation in southern Alberta, 1900 - 1930

Bibliography: p. 114-123

Itinerant Jewish and Arabic Trading in the Dene’s North, 1916-1930

In late nineteenth century and especially in the interwar years, “free traders” took advantage of better transport systems to expand trade with Dene people in the Athabasca and Mackenzie Districts. Well versed in fur grading and supported by credit in the expanding industrializing fur industry in the south, “itinerant” peddlers worked independently and often controversially alongside larger capitalized fur companies such as the Hudson’s Bay Company. A large number of these newcomers were Jews. This article suggests that Jews and, to a lesser extent, Lebanese and other Arabic traders became critical in the modernization of the Canadian North. They helped create an itinerant trader-Dene “contact zone” where the mixed meaning of credit, cash, and goods transactions provided northern Aboriginal trappers the means to negotiate modernism on their own terms in the interwar years. However, by the late 1920s, the state, encouraged by larger capitalized companies, implemented policies to restrict and finally close down this contact zone. The history of itinerant trading, then, raises questions about the long-term history of capitalism and co-related economic neo-colonialism in the Canadian north and their impact on First Nations.À compter de la fin du XIXe siècle et notamment pendant l’entre-deux-guerres, les « commerçants de fourrures libres » ont profité de l’amélioration des réseaux de transport pour développer leurs échanges commerciaux avec les Dénés des districts de l’Athabasca et de Mckenzie. Très habiles dans le classement des fourrures et soutenus par le crédit d’une industrie de la fourrure en expansion dans le sud, les marchands « ambulants » travaillaient en mode autonome et souvent de façon controversée aux côtés de grandes compagnies pelletières bien capitalisées, comme la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson. Un grand nombre de ces nouveaux venus étaient juifs. Le présent article avance que les Juifs et, dans une moindre mesure, les Libanais et autres commerçants arabes étaient devenus indispensables pour la modernisation du Nord canadien. Ils ont contribué à mettre en place une « zone de contact » entre les marchands ambulants et les Dénés où le mélange des notions de crédit, d’argent comptant et de vente de marchandises ont donné aux trappeurs autochtones du Nord les moyens de négocier librement le passage à la modernité pendant l’entre-deux-guerres. Cependant, vers la fin des années 1920, l’État, encouragé par les grandes entreprises dotées de capitaux permanents, a mis en oeuvre des politiques pour restreindre puis fermer cette zone de contact. L’histoire de la vente ambulante soulève donc des questions sur l’histoire du capitalisme dans sa longue durée et du néo-colonialisme économique correspondant dans le Nord canadien et sur leur incidence sur les Premières Nations