Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867-1877

David Mardiros is a lawyer and anthropological consultant in Terrace,
British Columbia.

Popular accounts of the relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
peoples during the 19th century have left Canadians with a smug sense of
superiority when their experiences are compared to the situation in the
United States. We have not often questioned the conventional wisdom that
Canadian treaty policy was an enlightened exercise that, in conjunction
with the appearance of the North West Mounted Police, produced lasting
peace in the Canadian West while American policy produced the Indian
Wars. As Jill St. Germain points out in her analysis of a decade in
which both the United States and Canada concluded major agreements with
Aboriginal nations, Canadian and American policies concerning the
original inhabitants of North America were not as strikingly different
as conventional historical accounts have reported. Indeed, she argues,
Canadian policy during this period was more a reaction to circumstances
that arose south of the border than it was a well-developed plan to
secure good relations with First Nations.

The book presents a careful and eminently readable analysis of not just
the treaty documents themselves but also the historical context within
which the treaties were negotiated, and offers a refreshing perspective
on the development of the North American “frontier” in the third
quarter of the 19th century. St. Germain argues that differences in
American and Canadian policies resulted not because of a different
philosophy but because of the inertia (and parsimony) of the Canadian
government. The crisis on the American Plains in the 1860s and
1870s—which resulted from the rapid expansion of the settler
population westward and the inevitable conflict with the indigenous
peoples whose lands the settlers traveled through and occupied—was not
felt in Canada. As a result, the situation in Canada was not seen to
warrant the same kind of radical (and expensive) action. In discussing
the terms of the various treaties, the book also includes a useful
appendix that presents the substance of the treaties in an easily
comparable format.

Given the continuing debate over the nature and content of modern
agreements that should be negotiated with First Nations, this book is
useful reading for anyone who seeks to understand how difficult it is to
bridge the cultural divide that has long separated Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal Canadians and Americans.