Broken Treaties: United States and Canadian Relations with the Lakotas and the Plains Cree, 1868-1885

8. Treaty Six and the Northwest Rebellion, 1885

311 In 1875 the failure of the Allison Commission to negotiate away the Black Hills introduced a chill into subsequent U.S.-Lakota relations . Under its inmuence advocates of a military solution began to edge out the Peace Policy supporters, their gains exempliled in the decisions to suspend enforcement of trespass regulations in the Black Hills and to issue an ultimatum that all off-reservation Lakotas report to their agencies or come under military jurisdiction . Among the Lakotas some med to the non-treaty camps in the north, determined to meet any U.S. assault on equal terms, while many others battened down for the expected deluge of U.S. wrath. Both sides anticipated imminent conmict, and in 1876, when the army began to move, there may have been regret, but there was little surprise. Events unfolded in a different pattern in Canada over the equally portentous winter of 1884–1885. The Cree council held in August 1884 had indeed shaken Canadian-Cree relations to their foundations and brought attention anew to the ongoing aggravation over treaty implementation. Wholly absent from the Canadian context, however, was the element of danger—implied, threatened, or understood—in the intentions of either the Cree leaders who had gathered at Fort Carlton or the Canadian government . As a result, neither was prepared when their individual agendas were suddenly engulfed in late winter by the separate crisis of an insurrection by the Métis, inaugurated at Duck Lake on March 26, 1885. The ensuing conmict had the effect of restoring Treaty Six to 8 Treaty Six and the Northwest Rebellion, 1885 312 Treaty Six and the Northwest Rebellion, 1885 center stage, at least momentarily, as a framework for CanadianCree relations. The majority of the Plains Cree aflrmed their loyalty, in action and word, while Canada invoked treaty honor as the context in which to deal with those few Crees believed to be complicit. The onset of rebellion derailed the proposed council of 1885, at which the Crees had hoped to call Canada to account and demand treaty fullllment as the Crees understood it. But the Métis uprising did not have to destroy all possibility that Canada might yet come around. The events on the Saskatchewan too easily justiled the dismissal of a serious investigation of why the Crees had or had not remained loyal. But in Parliament a major critique of government Indian administration in the West sparked a signilcant review. If the Cree interpretation of treaty relations had made any inroads into Canadian consciousness, then the debate in the House of Commons might have proved the watershed in Canadian-Cree relations, opening the door to understanding, the necessary lrst step to amelioration. But Liberal mp Malcolm Cameron’s assaults on the government’s record of “broken promises” in July 1885 and again in April 1886 were, as Edgar Dewdney characterized Cree grievances in 1884, “the same old story.” The events of 1885 stood apart from those of the previous six years in form, but as they remected Canadian-Cree relations, the same patterns persisted . Neither Canada nor the Plains Cree breached the gulf of misunderstanding regarding their interpretations of Treaty Six that had existed from 1876. The effect of 1885 was to entrench the government’s interpretation in the public mind and the historical record. Aftermath of the Council of 1884 The council of 1884 brought a readjustment in assumptions and tactics by the Crees but not in overall objectives. The aims of those who gathered at Fort Carlton that August remained as they had always been—to continue to abide by treaty commitments to lawful and peaceful behavior and to hold Canada to its obligations Treaty Six and the Northwest Rebellion, 1885 313 under Treaty Six as the Crees understood them. In pursuit of the latter the chiefs were now prepared to accept that they had erred in giving Canada the benelt of the doubt and that Canada’s persistent indifference in the implementation of its treaty promises was not a failing of ignorance but a manifestation of deliberate duplicity. This was a shocking revelation of the solemnly sworn treaty relationship, but having digested it, the Crees could now address the problem of Canadian insincerity. They would do this through a new strategy of a united front and also by relinquishing the practice of appeals without consequences. At Fort Carlton in 1884 they promised action in the event that their...