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Chapter One - PreConfederation

Introduction

This brief outline, originally written in 1980 as an historical background to the Statement of Claim of the Ontario Metis and Non-Status Indian Association, focuses on the two most significant issues in the relationship between Native Canadians and Euro-Canadians. They are the fundamental factors, from a Native perspective, which contribute to the plight of all Native people in Canada. These factors are: 

1) the lack of legal recognition of most Native people in Canada as an aboriginal and indigenous population; and 2) the lack of specific legal recognition of aboriginal title and rights to their home and native land in Canadian law.Had Canada been discovered in 1976, when the Canadian government signed the International Covenant on Human Rights, there would have been no question that Canada's Native people would have both the right to self determination and the right to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources. These two basic human rights are exactly what Canada's Native people are claiming today. This historical outline of the Metis and Non-Status Indians in Ontario, is part of the story of how those rights were subverted. It is also the basis of the claim to restitution of those rights, or compensation for their loss. 

Today most Canadians would be suprised to learn that the Indian Act does not apply to most of the country's aboriginal population. They would also be suprised to learn that --apart from private individual ownership-- Canada's Aboriginal population does not own any land. Even the reservations are owned by the Crown. How the dispossession of an entire people from the birthright of their identity and their homeland could be buried in the footnotes of Canada's history is a chronicle of evasion and expediency that makes the apartheid policies of South Africa at least honest by comparison. Canadians have much to learn from a Native perspective of their country's history. 
 

White/Native Contact

Historically, hindsight would lead us to believe that the story of White/Native relations was one of continuous conflict. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. With few exceptions the initial contacts resulted in co-operation, mutual wonder, and the exchanging of gifts. Oral traditions of many Native people had predicted, by centuries, the coming of a strange people from across the water. The courts of Europe buzzed with the philisophical implications of the discovery of a people who seemed to have escaped the stigma of the Garden of Eden and original sin. There are many historical accounts of Native people literally saving the lives of half-starved Europeans who were too helpless to survive in what they saw as a wilderness. 

The initial conflicts were not between Native people and Whites at all. The conflicts were between the competing Crowns of Europe --Spain, France, England, Portugal, and Holland,-- for title to the "new" world. It was in the alliance of various tribes, on different parts of the continent, with the various European Crowns that enmity and conflict was escalated. 

There is little doubt the seeds of conflict existed in the contrasting cultures and needed only the fertile ground of greed to grow. The critical difference between Native and European cultures lie in their differing cultural perceptions in relation to land. Native people adapted to nature and shared the land with other humans and with animals. Europeans had a tradition of dominating nature and possessing the land, often to the exclusion of other humans and other animals . 

Where Europeans saw a dangerous wilderness that had to be driven back before the onslaught of civilized life, Native people saw a smorgasboard of gifts to be harvested by all, each in their season. Although Native people identified strongly with communal territory, they could no more imagine exclusive individual ownership of land than they could individually own air. Europeans, however, required exclusive ownership to establish personal identity and national security.

With so vast a land and so few people, this difference in cultural orientation had litte significance for the first two hundred years of White/Native contact. But it is precisely this difference which formed the basis of the misunderstandings and conflicts which were to write so many bloody pages of history in the following two hundred years. The first European forays into the "new" world were simply treasure hunts. They were raiding and trading parties, a process with which many of the Native populations were thoroughly familiar. 

In the northern half of the continent, furs became the major "treasure" and Natives were quick to respond to the seemingly inexhaustible hunger for them. The first formal agreements arising out of this contact were trading agreements. Once the trade patterns were established, and particularly when different European nations began trading consistently and respectively with the same tribal groups of people, it became evident that trade wou ld be more efficient and more profitable if base camps, and eventually trading posts, were established. 

Once the trading areas of the competing French and English were numerous enough to overlap, the problem of defending trade routes became critical. The simplest solution was to form an alliance with the local tribes to defend the territory from other Europeans and, incidentally, the tribes with whom the competing European power was trading. From trade alliance, to political alliance, to military alliance was a process the people of North America understood only too well. Both sides --that is, all four sides-- were quick to exploit existing enmities to their own short term advantage. 

Title to the Land

The spreading of White settlements outward from the trading posts complicated relationsips between whites and Natives considerably. Transitory trading camps and outposts were a natural part of Native land use, although fences and fortifications constructed by aliens generated uneasy suspicions. But, in the earliest stages at least, the solution was obvious and --to the Whites-- self-evident. It appeared a simple matter to buy or trade with the Indians for the land they wanted. 

Neighbouring tribes had often come to arrangements for use of particular parcels of land. A simple parlay, an exchange of gifts, a discussion of terms, a verbal agreement sealed by a further exchange of gifts, and the matter was settled. But, it must be emphasized that, from a Native perspective, these agreements had absolutely no relationship to title to, or ownership of, the land. At the very most, they were transactions to arrange more or less temporary use of the land, or to share that use. 

The first treaties signed in North America, by Quaker settlers, did not mention land at all. They were declarations of brotherhood and mutual respect, simply declaring that all would live in peace, with an exchange of gifts, a handclasp, and a smoke to seal the bargain. But the intent, if not the letter, of the European perspective was quite clear. They wanted exclusive possession of the land for settlement and, increasingly as time went on, treaties were designed to establish an arrangement whereby Europeans would stay "here" and Indians would stay "over there." The fact that a single peppercorn could be the payment of exchange, or that the sound of a gunshot could determine the amount of land involved, clearly indicates the symbolic nature of these early agreements. In any case, it was culturally inconceivable to the Natives involved that land title was being transferred or even exclusive land use established. 

Title to the land was a critical issue to the European super-powers of the day who were competing for dominance in North America. But tactics, strategies, and even philosophies differed markedly among the European nations. While competing Crowns claimed the "new" land by virtue of discovery and/or conquest, Popes and philosophers declared that the existing inhabitants possessed the land. Each country prepared their own gambits according to their own traditions. In the eastern half of the contintent, the French and English were soon the only major contenders. 

The French simply assumed sovereignty over the land. They formed political, military, and physical alliances with the Native people, producing a growing population of mixed bloods biased in favour of their fathers. The backbone of the French trading networks and settlements was that of religion and kinship, with an occasional boost from a well aimed musket. Freed from the energy and rum consuming process of treaty making, the French were able to exercise their influence by trading, industriously converting Natives to Catholicism, and considerably expanding their blood lines. 

The English, at first, were relatively indifferent to Christian crusades and creating mixed blood progeny. They were far more interested in establishing some form of legal relationship to the land. While the French were making love, the English were making treaties and, in 1701, a Royal Treaty placed the Five Nations --and their hunting grounds-- under the protection of the Crown of England. 

By the turn of the 19th century, the increasingly over-lapping trading empires of the French and English echoed the centuries old conflicts of their respective motherlands. On the one hand, kings and queens vied mightily with each other as to who could "grant" the largest tracts of this "new" land to the courtiers most likely to return the benefits of that land to royal coffers. On the other hand, they were busy forming political and military alliances with the "Sovereign Nations of Indian Peoples" who held the balance of military power in North America. 

Expanding White settlement soon developed a conflict of interest both with the European Crowns and with the Indians. The French became concerned at the alarming rate their young men were disappearing into the forest with their Native lovers and the English Crown realized that many of the settlers were making more deals for themselves than they were for the Crown. Both processes sapped the military strength of the respective European forces and, as French and English conflicts escalated, both Crowns frantically legislated corrective measures. 

The French colonists no longer received payments for marrying Native women, and licensing systems for the fur trade made outlaws of any mixed bloods who were not directly controlled from Montreal. English colonists were ordered to stop paying Indians for lands that --from the Crown's point of view-- they had no right to buy. In exact proportion to the necessity for maintaining Native alliances, the British Crown ordered colonial governments to respect the lands and territories of loyal Native allies. But these domestic issues were forced into the background by the outbreak of war. 

When England finally checkmated the French and --again from the Crown's point of view-- established a monopoly on sovereignty, the role of Native people ch anged markedly. Native allies were now seen as a more or less loyal opposition in a game between the colonists and the Crown. From a Native perspective of this same period, very little had changed in terms of sovereignty and --apart from a few blisters of settlement along the east coast , the St. Lawrence River, and the lower Great Lakes-- nothing had changed in terms of land ownership. 

Traditional Native enmities, fueled by French and English muskets, flared into war causing a migration of more peaceful peoples into the upper Great Lakes. Most of North America's Native population had yet to meet a Whiteman, although contact with mixed bloods was becoming more frequent. 

Rise of the Mixed Bloods

The phenomena of a maturing generation of mixed bloods on the contintent in the 1700's was creating an increasingly significant factor in White/Native relationships. Reaping the harvest of an expanding fur trade, Halfbreeds spread outward from settlements and trade depots into the upper Great Lakes and the northwestern hinterland of western Lake Superior and Red River country. Only occasionally interrupted by futile licensing regulations and periodic calls to battle against the Sioux, the French, the Iroquois, or the English --depending on the time and circumstance-- the mixed bloods harvested their livelihood from their homeland. 

Identified as Indians by most non-Indians and as Whites by many non-Whites, they took their place at the crossroads of frontier society. Many who lived with their Indian brothers became spokesmen and chiefs of their tribes. Others, raised in the shadow of their fathers, became traders, clerks, farmers and small businessmen, with another handful receiving full education and leading their communities as missionaries or military commanders. Wherever Whites and Indians met, each naturally turned to the mixed bloods in their communities to conduct the trade, negotiation, or alliance. 

The growth of a new mixed blood population was paralleled by a maturation of smaller native-born White population and by the growing prevalence of permanent settlers, as opposed to Europeans who came to make their fortune in the new world and take it back to their homeland. The effect of this phenomenon was a steadily increasing conflict between the aims and goals of the settlers as opposed to those of the European Crowns. That conflict centered around the acquisition and ownership of land and the issue of sovereignty of new and old world peoples. At the heart of the conflict were the sovereignty and property rights of Native Indian people and their mixed blood relatives. 

The Royal Proclamation of 1763

A test case of sovereignty between Natives, colonies, and the Crown resulted in King Philip's war in Plymouth in the 1670's, with ominous implications for Native peoples. This scenario was repeated with the Pontiac Uprising in l763, with equally ominous --and strangely ambiguous-- results. From a Native perspective, these events were an assertion of Native sovereignty and communal possession of the land, against the voracious expansion of settlement contrary to the treaties and the Royal Instructions to the colonial governors of the day.

Since the Royal instructions had proven dangerously ineffective in maintaining the security of the colonies and since some regulation of the new territories recently acquired by the conquest of the French was necessary, the King issued a Proclalamtion to establish territorial control and to correct admitted "frauds and abuses" against Native peoples who were allied with the Crown. The Proclamation established a huge corridor of land from the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, excluding settlement, as Indian land. All "inadvertant" settlement was to be removed from the area and no new settlement was to take place unless, of course, the Indians wished to sell the land to the Crown. 

On the face of it, the Proclamation, although Pontiac had lost the battle, seemed a victory for the Natives in the continuing war for land. But, the Royal intent of the Proclamation was to draw a very fine line between pacification of a very suspicious Native population and appeasement of equally suspicious settlers, while simultaneously establishing technical Crown title to the land. From the Crown's point of view, the Proclamation was a complete success; from the settler's point of view, a temporary hindrance to expansion; and from the Native perspective, an empty promise. 

As the first formal description of Native/settler/Crown relationship to the land, the Proclamation --which has never been repealed-- is a seminal document in the history of sovereignty and land use in North America, for both sides of the issue. On the one hand, it clearly specified that Indians had possession of land that was not to be eroded by expanding settlment. On the other hand it provided the very mechanism --the formal treaty process-- by which Natives were to be deprived of that same land. 

The document describes Indian lands, but does not define the term "Indian" --except as being allied to the Crown. This, in effect, created a class of Native people who had no legal relationship to their land, --as far as the Crown was concerned-- because they were not allied to the Crown. 

It also threatened the holdings of mixed blood peoples in the "Indian lands" area who could not be identified as Indians. 

Unintentionally, perhaps, the Proclamation planted the seeds of the problems Metis and Non-Status Indians face today. By recognizing the rights of a specific group of Natives --those allied with the Crown-- to the exclusion of others, the Proclamation began digging a grave for the rights of those Natives who were apparently not specifically included in the criteria.

A Native State 

Obviously, White/Native relationships were becoming increasingly complex and increasingly strained. A decade before the Proclamation, the failure of se lf-serving colonial policies and commandants to deal with Natives led to the creation of a central military authority to control Indian affairs. Later divided into two superintendencies --a fact which predicted the coming colonial revolutions-- the establishment of a central authority to deal with Indian affairs became a fixed element in colonial policy. 

Although the first treaties following the Proclamation actually increased "Indian Lands", (albeit at the expense of other, non-allied, Indians) , all of the other factors in colonial development threatened the Native position. Ever-expanding settlement and escalating Crown/colonial conflict ws setting the stage for a massive take-over of Indian land. Only the threat of renewed French/English confrontation and a growing suspicion of colonial revolution contributed to temporary policies designed to placate Native leaders and maintain their military alliance. 

The Quebec Act of 1774 extended British control into the interior and was followed in 1775 with a new plan for the management of Indian affairs --two factors which planted the seeds of an expectation that a self-governing Native state was to be developed, in exchange for Native alliance to the Crown. A proposal to define the upper Great Lakes country as a colony or province of indigenous people had been subverted by southern colonial officials who were following a blatant policy of enouraging conflicts between Native groups to prevent just such an occurance. In the south it was a relatively simple matter to play the fears of those tribes which had been allied with the French against the expectations of those allied with the English Crown. But "domestic" issues faded into the background in the face of a colonial revolution --and the corresponding necessity of Native alliance and/or neutrality. 

Hindsight dictates that the Treaty of Paris in 1783 was the tombstone of Native sovereignty in North America. The creation of the Unites States and the cession of sourthern Great Lake and Ohio country, without so much as a mention of Indians or Indian lands, blatantly belied Crown protection of Indians lands under the Proclamation of 1763 and subsequent treaties. 

As Native allies of the French had been confused at the transfer of Indian lands to the English, English Native allies were outraged that the English King would surrender Indian lands to the United States without even notice or consultation. Only the most deft and machiavellian diplomacy by Indian Affairs, buttressed later by a system of "loyalist" land grants, averted an insurrection. 

The fact that British posts were maintained in the American interior led many to believe the English would retake the area and this was reinforced by an absense of an American military prescence and "business-as-usual" attitude in north-south trade routes. For those who staunchly supported the Crown, the Treaty was a paper surrender that would soon be reversed. Proposals, from both American and British sources, advocating the creation of a Native state as a buffer between the White opponents in the "new" world, fed the remaining hopes of non -violent Native leaders.

The new, and from a Native perspective, arbitrary American border was, in practical terms, a fiction. North-south trade patterns continued as before and certainly the Indian (Tecumseth) confederacy that was coalescing straddled in the invisible border. 

Early Native military victories over American forces fueled the dreams of a Native state and even after the Indian defeat at Fallen timbers, the Jay Treaty specifically excluded Indians from the border's restrictions. In fact, several decades would pass before the divisive effect of the border would significantly alter Native land use and occupancy. 

The outbreak of the war of 1812 seemed a complete affirmation of Indian expectations. The capture of Michilimackinac and the victories of Brock and Tecumseth at Detroit resurrected, briefly, the dream of a Native state. The Treaty of Ghent, which subsequently ended the war, was a rude awakening, and although the terms of treaty specified Indians were to retain the lands they held in 1811 , the subsequent decades of bloody American history were to prove otherwise. North of the border, history was to prove less bloody --but no less devastating, particularly for mixed bloods. 

From a White perspective, the issue of Native sovereignty simply faded into insignificance in the 1820's. Decimated by disease, dispirited by war, fragmented by treaties and borders, and unecessary as allies in settler wars, the Native population were no longer a threat to major settlement --and certainly in no position to militarily assert claims of sovereignty. The issue of Native ownership of land, however, was considerably more problematic, as was the increasingly ambiguous position of mixed blood peoples. 

The New Breed

In almost direct proportion to the demise of the military and political significance of Indians in colonial life, there was a corresponding rise in the influence and significance of mixed blood population on every level of frontier society. The political and economic survival of growing settlements was, in reality if not officially, dependent on a thoroughly entrenched kinship network of mixed bloods. Trade, military security, Indian relations and exploration were simply impossible without mixed blood or halfbreed co-operation.

The Indian Department, see-sawing between civil and military control, relied on a network of "beloved men" --most of them mixed bloods-- to develop and maintain workable relations with Indians. The Johnson and Claus families practically controlled the Department and were, themselves, responsible for several hundred mixed blood children. Many department officials were half or quarter bloods and played a major critical roles in executing policy. 

On paper at least, the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the vast area of Rupert's Land. Most of its employees were mixed bloods by 1800 and as events at Red River were to prove, the company was entirely dependent on mixed blood co-operation. Trade and transportation of goods were, in practice, the domain of the Bois Brule and the Voyageur, most of whom were mixed bloods. The families of these hardy men were the majority in all but the largest settlements. Those the Bay couldn't or refused to employ became the core of the competing companies or established independent businesses processing food stuffs for the trade. 

Although often snobbishly belittled by aristocratic comissioned officers and European army regulars, mixed bloods held the balance of military power for decades in colonial conflicts. They fought Sioux and Iroquois to a standstill. Allied with the French, they defeated the English; allied with the English, they defeated the French and Americans; and allied with the Indians, they scored victories over the English and Americans. Often fighting in coherent units, or as leaders of Indian units, they were a decisive factor in every major military engagement of the century. 

A proud and powerful, resourceful and skillful people, they had every expectation of taking their rightful place in the new nations that were forming in the "new" world. As the lifeblood of the frontier economy, the muscle of the colonial military, and the diplomats of White/Indian statemanship, they played a critical role in the evolution of North America up to 1800. The result of two c enturies of adaptation, a new race verged on the formation of a new people and a new nation in a new world. 

But, with a bitter suddeness, history reversed itself. As the previous events of the previous half-century had victimized the Indian people, the following fifty years were to place the mixed bloods on the twin sacrificial altars of prejudice and expediency. 

The Metis Nation

The basic causative factors that had led to the birth of the United States --political self-determination and free trade-- found fertile ground on a continental scale in the 1800's. In the relative peace following the war of 1812, crown/colony conflicts escalated on a domestic front and "old" world governors found it increasingly difficult to rule the "new" world. Concern over Indian affairs was pushed into the background as trade and settlement spread west in an increasingly conscious atempt to control a continent in the face of growing competition from south of the border.

In the traditonal colonial pattern, the Earl of Selkirk had manipulated a large grant of land from the Hudson's Bay Company in Red River in 1811. Following an equally traditional format, his colonial governor unilaterally legislated hunting and trade restrictions on the local population to support the struggling colony. The resistance of the population, who considered themselves the masters --if not the owners-- of the area was predicatable and in 1816 Governor Semple and twenty of his officers and men fell under the guns of a breed of men variously called Halfbreeds, Bois Brule, or Metis.

The Battle of Seven Oaks, (described as a massacre from the White perspective), was a clear demonstration that indigenous, mixed blood populations were prepared to fight for their rights. The subsequent actions of their leader, Cuthbert Grant, clearly indicated that they were prepared to, and capable of, participating in and contributing to the progressive development of their communities. The Metis and Halfbreeds of Red River has succeeded in establishing a social, political and military prescence in their homeland, but their brothers in ot her parts of the country were not fairing as well. 

While the flag of the new Metis Nation flew proudly in Red River, two major developments were unfolding in the east which were to jeopardize the position of mixed blood peoples there. The first was the decline of the fur trade and the second was the end of the Johnson era in the Indian Department. Just as dealing with Indians on a "equal" basis had deteriorated with their decline as a military factor, the decline of mixed bloods as middlemen had a similar effect. 

Decline of the Middlemen

With the decline of the fur trade and the amalgamation of the Northwest and Hudson"s Bay companies in 1821, came a re-organization of the fur trade. George Simpson, the newly appointed head of the Company had twice the men he needed to operate half the number of trading posts formerly operated by the two separate companies. Having a low opinion of halfbreeds to begin with, he cheefully began cutting mixed bloods from the Company rolls. Apart from terminating, in some cases generations of employment, this also had the effect of depriving the former employees of retirement homes and lands --which the company technically owned. 

With the death of Claus in 1826 and the retirement of Johnson in 1828, the Indian Department underwent a similar re-organization. As the emphasis in the Department shifted from the alliance and pacification of Indians to their civilizing and Christianization, the "beloved men" of former days were no longer necesary. By the time the Department came under permanent civil control, it was more concerned with keeping costs down than with keeping promises. 

As the frontier moved west and north, timber, minerals, and settlement lands replaced furs as the staple wealth of the colonial economy. In the wake of the advancing frontier, settlement often surrounded Indian lands and surrenders of these lands accompanied by designated "reservations" for Indians became a feature of treaties at the time. Economic criteria had all but replaced military concerns in White/Native relationships and the position of the mixed bloods became increasingly ambiguous. 

Costs and Native Policies

The dual economic pressures of reducing the costs of the Indian Department and freeing cheaper lands for settlement in the 1830's created competing policies toward "managing" Indians. On the one hand, and chiefly at the urging of missionaires, a program of "agriculturizing" Indians as a means of raising the "savage" to "civilization" was promoted. On the other hand, and chiefly at the urging of a new Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Francis Bond-Head, civilization was seen as a contamination of the "noble savage" and removal from civilization was promoted. 

The first policy was based on the assumption that the eventual fate of the Native population was assimilation and the second policy on the assumption that the Native population, "with the exception of a few half-castes", would become extinct. These two policies has one goal in common --to remove Indians from lands needed for settlement. Indians, if they could be encouraged to farm, would no longer need hunting lands. 

And, obviously, if all Indian were removed to one spot --Manitoulin Island, for example-- the land they left would be free for settlement. 

The evolution of these policies co-incided with an Imperial policy of giving more responsibility for Indian affairs to colonial governments --a policy Natives and even some Whites resisted. As the possibility of the termination of Imperial funds to the Indian Department grew, the pressure to cut costs increased. The major expenditure of the Department was in the cost of "presents" distributed annually to "loyalist" Indians since the War of 1812. A plan to phase out this expense contained the seeds of post-Confederation policy in excluding Metis and Non-Status Indians from the Indian Act. "Visiting" or American Indians, all Indians born after 1846, and half-castes without tribal members hip were to be excluded from annual presents. 

Changing Halfbreed Status

Fearful of the effects of the new policies, a rash of Indian Grand Councils were held during the period to defend land rights and maintain their traditional relationship with the Imperial Crown. Supported by pro-aboriginal White organizations and often led by educated mixed bloods, these councils --the forerunners of today's Native organizations-- petitioned governors and the Crown itself to counteract the new policies and assert their own rights. For the first time the specific issue of mixed blood was formally addressed from a Native perspective. 

A general Indian Council in 1836 raised the question of halfbreed membership in the tribes and decided that: 
 

"...IF ANY MAN OR WOMAN, BEING A HALF-INDIAN WISHED TO 
BECOME PART OF, OR ATTACHED TO ANY TRIBE, HE OR SHE 
SHALL BE CLAIMED, AND IN EVERY RESPECT CONSIDERED AS 
BELONGING TO THAT TRIBE:...." 

The Indian Department attitude toward halfbreeds was epitomized by its Chief Superintendant, Head: 

"...THE BREED OF HALF-CASTES...WOULD GIVE A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE TO THE GOVERNMENT IF THEY HAD ANYTHING TO CLAIM 
UNDER STRICT TREASURY REGULATIONS." 

The 1840's saw a decade of commissions and investigations into Indian Affairs in general and the Indian Department in particular. Policies were floundering, costs were rising, and the very existence of the Department was seriously threatened, as evidenced by the fact that no provisions were made for the Department in the union of Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada. The Department, however, pressed on with an investigation into the halfbreed Native population. 

The commissions variously recommended re-organization and accounting systems for the Department, the exclusion of American Indians from annual presents, and the ultimate phasing out of the present-giving tradition. Although little specific information about halfbreeds was included in the comission's reports, it was recommended that halfbreeds not living as Indians should be excluded from presents. Considerable attention was given to "squatters" on Indian lands and ways of removing them and paying compensation for imporovements. The fact that most of these so-called squatters would, in fact, be mixed bloods was not mentioned --but the effect of this policy on mixed blood dwellers on Indian land was soon to become only too evident. 

Halfbreed Resistance

By the end of the decade the administrative and logistic problems of the Department were eclipsed by a Halfbreed uprising in the Sault area. Reports of boulders of solid copper in the Upper Great Lakes had triggered a rash of speculative prospecting and mining on unsurrendered Indian lands. Indian and Halfbreed complaints and petitions around the issue were repeatedly ignored and a few mines began extraction. 

Determined to assert their rights and with some expectation of exploiting the resource themselves, the local Natives organized a token resistance. With cannon stolen from a Hudson"s Bay Company post, the expedition "captured" the Quebec Mining Company's mine at Mica Bay in a bloodless coup. Shocked into action and disconcerted by the realization the "culprits" could not be convicted, as the courts had no jurisdiction on unsurrendered land, authorities hasitly began negotiations for a treaty in the area. 

In an unconnected, but simultaneous event in Red River, the Metis had once more taken up arms. Angered by increasingly severe restrictions on fur trading, several hundred armed Metis surrounded a courthouse where three of them had been charged with smuggling furs. Although the court --including Cuthbert Grant-- registered a conviction, no sentences were ordered and the jubliant Metis knew they had successfully challenged the Hudson's Bay monopoly in the West. The deposed Grant was replaced by a new leader --Louis Riel Sr. 

Although troops were hastily dispatched to both areas, no shots were fired. But it was obvious to all sides that the mixed bloods were a factor that had to be dealt with. The effect, if not the intent, of subsequent policy was to drive a legislated wedge between so-called full-blooded Indians and so-called Ha lfbreeds. The fact that this was, in biological terms often impossible, only briefly daunted legislators of the time. The trick was to define Indians in terms of Indian relationship to Indian lands. The rest, as history was to prove, would take care of itself. 

Legislated Identity 

The first attempt to define Indians surfaced in Lower Canada in 1850. The Act created a Commissioner of Lands and defined the people who were entitled to those lands: 
 

Firstly: ALL PERSONS OF INDIAN BLOOD, REPUTED TO BELONG TO 
A PARTICULAR BODY OR TRIBE OF INDIANS INTERESTED IN SUCH 
LANDS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS.

Secondly: ALL PERSONS INTER-MARRIED WITH SUCH INDIANS AND RESIDING AMONGS THEM AND THE DESCENDANTS OF SUCH PERSONS. 

Thirdly: ALL PERSONS RESIDING AMONG SUCH INDIANS, WHOSE PARENTS ON EITHER SIDE WERE OR ARE INDIANS OF SUCH A BODY OR TRIBE, 

Fourthly: ALL PERSONS ADOPTED IN INFANCY BY ANY SUCH INDIANS 
AND RESIDING IN THE VILLAGE OR UPON THE LAND OF SUCH TRIBES OR BODY OF INDIANS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS.

This Act, however, did not apply in Upper Canada and was, in fact, modified a year later to exclude adopted persons and confine the inter-marriage clause to women. The pattern for a shrinking definition was set, as relatively few white women married Indians and Indian women marrying Whites or non -Indian Natives under the Act would lose their "status", or rights to tribal lands. 

The fact that mixed bloods had been successfully relegated to a legislative no-man's land became obvious when mining magnate W.B. Robinson began negotiating the treaties of Lakes Huron and Superior. After forcing a split between the Mica Bay faction, who were holding out for local development of mining resources, Robinson refused to negotiate with the The Chiefs, in turn, pressed the Halfbreed claim and Robinson deftly countered by leaving the inclusion of Halfbreeds up to the Chiefs.

The truth, at last, was obvious. Halfbreeds in the Sault had been denied an earlier claim to their lands --the Proclamation of 1763 had declared the area as Indian land-- on the basis that the lands had to be formally surrendered before title could be transferred. Now that the formal surrender was accomplished, they were denied their claims on the basis that they were not Indians --a fact the Americans across the river had recognized and made allowances for in their treaties. 

The signing of the treaties and the definition of Indians with rights to Indian lands, generated a rash of petitions from mixed bloods and whites alike, claiming other land in compensation for improvement to the lands they lost. Negative and/or delayed response led to a heavy migration south and west to the far reaches of, as yet, unsurrendered lands. Even those who, by their own skill or by administrative inadvertance, managed to attach themselves to treaty would, within a generation, find themselves divorced from their homeland.

The closing years of the 1850's saw another spate of investigations and corresponding legislation. With the assignment of Imperial responsibility for Natives all but formally transferred to the colonial governments, the stage was set for the annihilation of Native aboriginal rights. Although existing legislation did not, in so many words, deal with the Halfbreed issues, the reports and commissions were adamant that the Halfbreeds should not be recognized as Indians. 

In 1857, An Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes in this Province" (of Canada) laid the formal groundwork for the creation of a 

Non-Status Indian population. Now that Indians had been, more or less, defined, legislators proceeded with mechanisms for excluding Natives from that definition. Although the express intent was the "the gradual removal of all legal distinction" between Indian and other "Canadian subjects", the fact that the Department's budget had been cut in half had its inevitable in fluence.

The heart of this Act was its "enfranchisement" clauses which stipulated conditions under which an Indian could "achieve" the same status as other Canadians --but neglected to point out that it would also involve the loss of all aboriginal rights. Native response to the enfranchisement clause was adamantly negative and very few were actually enfranchised under its provisions. So few in fact, the Department had to look elsewhere for funds and eventually adopted a policy of assigning ten percent of funds held in trust for Indians to defray the costs of the Department. 

The Act also established a new definition of Indian:-
 

INDIANS OR PERSONS OF INDIAN BLOOD OR INTER-MARRIED WITH
INDIANS, WHO SHALL BE ACKNOWLEGED AS MEMBERS OF INDIAN 
TRIBES OR BANDS RESIDING UPON LANDS WHICH HAVE NEVER BEEN SURRENDERED TO THE CROWN (OR WHICH HAVING BEEN SET APART, 
OR ARE THEN RESERVED FOR THE USE OF ANY TRIBE OR BAND OF 
INDIANS IN COMMON.) 

This definition excluded all Native people who did not live on reserve or, as yet, unsurrendered lands. This Act appeared to repatiate those excluded in 1851, but that oversight, as we shall we, was corrected following Confederation. 

When authority to manage Indian affairs was formally transferred from Imperial to Colonial authorities in 1860, legislators responded immediately --and predictably. After creating a Department of Crown Land under a Commissioner a second Act made that Commissioner the Chief Superinetendant of Indian Affairs. With the fox securely locked in the chicken coop, colonial authorities could now turn to the more pressing issues of expanding boundaries of the Province in Canada in preparation for the creation of the Kingdom of Canada. 

With the eastern (Quebec and the Maritimes) and northern (Upper Great Lakes) areas more less under the control of southern business and political interests, the west and northwest became the focal point for expansionists. Colonial authorities had become obsessed with beating Americans to the possession of the Great Northwest The major obstacles to this expansion were easily identified, They were the Hudson's Bay Company, who technically owned Rupertsland ; the Native population who occupied the unsurrendered Indian land; and the lack of a "communication" with the area. 

The War for the West

Two of the three fronts to win the war for the west were set in the late 1850's and early 1860's. An all-out campaign to discredit the Hudson's Bay Company was combined with a series of expeditions to plot a route from the west end of Lake Superior to the Red River territory of Assiniboia. The Native front, initially perceived as the least problematical of the barriers to expansion, was used to generate leverage on the other two fronts. 

Although pressures toward confederation, --the need for a national railway, and both real and paranoid fears of an American take over in the Northwest-- were catalytic agents in the expansion process, in tactical and logistic terms the movement was an attempt to expand southern (Ontario) business interests as far west as possible. As the last major frontier, the west was also the last opportunity for fame, fortune, and empire in the northern half of the continent. Little wonder that the fact of Indian and Metis occupation of the west seemed insignificant to those who dreamed the National Dream and looked to make their fortunes. 

The Native people who lived in what is now western Ontario and the Prari es were very aware of the dangers they faced in terms of soverignty and aboriginal rights. The Indians knew they had to be treated with and, as a result of their previous bitter experience in the east, were prepared to drive a hard bargain. The Metis were an overwhelming majority in the Red River area and -- in the tradition of Cuthbert Grant and Louis Riel Sr.-- were prepared to militantly defend their rights.

When George Gladman, an ex-Hudson's Bay Halfbreed with family in Red River, led the first expedition into the area, he reported the local population eager to co-operate but determined to maintain their land rights and political control. Following his report, Gladman was dismissed and replaced by S.J. Dawson and H.Y. Hind, his subordinates, who were informing their superiors that very few of the population had title to their lands. With a short recess for the formalities of Confederation the battle for the west was on.