Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867–1877 by Jill St Germain (review)

humanities 437 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Jill St Germain. Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867B1877 University of Toronto Press. xxiv, 244. $45.00 Over the past fifteen years, historians of Native-newcomer relations in Canada and the United States have begun to produce comparative studies of the experience of Native peoples on both sides of the border. In 1987 Hana Samek published The Blackfoot Confederacy, 1880B1920: A Comparative Study of Canadian and U.S. Indian Policy, while more recently Roger L. Nichols took a broad-brush approach with Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative History (1998), and C.L. Higham introduced the first thematic study with Noble, Wretched and Redeemable: Protestant Missionaries to the Indians in Canada and the United States, 1820B1900 in 2000. Now Jill St Germain, an Ottawa private scholar, has produced another useful thematic and comparative analysis in the published version of her MA thesis for Carleton University. St. Germain=s preoccupation is with government treaty-making policy in the United States and Canada in the late 1860s and 1870s, when the two states fashioned important treaties with western Indian nations. The Americans signed peace treaties with southwestern and High Plains nations at Medicine Lodge and Fort Laramie in 1867B68, and Canadians with a variety of First Nations from northwestern Ontario to the foothills of the Rockies between 1871 and 1877. The author=s approach is to compare the two governments= assumptions and objectives by examining the provisions they made for Indian reserves, for so-called >civilization= policies that today would be branded assimilative programs, and for efforts to preserve the buffalo and generally assist with Indians= subsistence in the post-treaty era. Indian Treaty-Making Policy argues persuasively that there were important differences between the two countries. The United States, which had a lengthy record of warfare with Indians throughout its history and more recently had been engaged in bloody battles with some of the First Nations in the western part of America, not surprisingly saw the treaties as agreements to restore and guarantee amicable relations between the parties. The Canadians, who had experienced little warfare between non-Natives and Natives in their history but who feared the power and potential for disruption that the western nations represented, approached treaty making with the objective of extinguishing First Nations= exclusive title to the lands they occupied in the interests of creating a peaceful west for future settlement. The two countries= approaches differed, too, in that in the United States treaty making was a high-profile political process that frequently saw political parties and the two houses of Congress pitted against each other, whereas in Canada it took place amid the apparent indifference of the political class. Neither country=s motives were particularly xxxxxx 438 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 noble, in spite of smug Canadians= notorious tendency to claim that their approach was, unlike that of their neighbours, >humane, just, and Christian.= St Germain concludes that Americans might have had the better claim to moral superiority inasmuch as their treaties provided much more assistance for Natives to make an economic transition after the buffalo were gone. A more appropriate description of Canadian policy, she concludes, was that it was >cheap, indifferent, and reactive.= St Germain=s handling of her complex and wide-ranging subject is generally adroit and comprehensive. Her research has missed few major sources (a 1996 work on Treaty 7 is a glaring example), and her interpretation of the evidence is usually skilful and fair-minded. Two points that are not given due weight are the youth of the Canadian state and the powerful influence on the Canadian Plains of the Hudson=s Bay Company. A factor in Canada=s appearing >cheap, indifferent, and reactive= when making treaty in the West in the 1870s was the reality that the Canadian federation had been carpentered together only a few years before Ottawa had to send treaty commissioners into the field. Moreover, the long history of fruitful relations between the Hudson=s Bay Company and western nations goes far to explain the...