Negotiating the Numbered Treaties

An Intellectual and Political Biography of Alexander Morris

Robert Talbot

Alexander Morris, the main negotiatior of many of the numbered treaties on the prairies, has often been portrayed as a parsimonious agent of the government, bent on taking advantage of First Nations chiefs and councillors. Author Robert J. Talbot takes a different view. He sees Morris as a man deeply sympathetic to the challenges faced by Canada’s Indigenous peoples as they sought to secure their future in the face of encroaching settlement and the disappearance of the buffalo. In Talbot’s analysis, Morris held the chiefs in high esteem–he viewed them as wise and pragmatic leaders and skilled negotiators who made a convincing case for more favourable terms than Morris’s colleagues in government were prepared to offer.

As Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the North West Territories in the 1870s, Morris was responsible for negotiating Treaties 3 to 6, and renegotiating Treaties 1 and 2. According to Talbot, both Morris and the First Nations negotiators viewed the treaties as the basis of a new, reciprocal arrangement among those who would share the land. Indeed, by the end of his appointment, Morris was seriously at odds with a myopic federal administration that favoured inaction over honouring its treaty promises.

Talbot’s research reveals Morris as a man of his time–but also a man who managed to embrace a larger concept of nationhood than successive federal governments imagined or were willing to accept. This is Morris’s story, but it is equally the story of the prairie treaties and the western expansion of Canada. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand confederation, the western expansion of Canada, and the treaties that are so important in First Nations–governmental relations today.

Contents

·         Acknowledgements

·         Introduction

Part I: The Man in the Making

1. Morris’s Place in Canadian Historiography

2. Morris’s Intellectual Development

·            Politics and Identity

·            Beliefs and Convictions

·            Early Perceptions of Indigenous Peoples

Part II: Business and Politics

3. Morris’s Business Career

·            Land Speculation

·            Morris’s Legal Career

4. The Politics of Annexation

·            Developing the Platform

·            In Office, 1861-1872

5. “Retirement” in the North West

Part III: The Negotiator

6. An Overview of the Numbered Treaties

7. The First Nations and the Treaties

·            History and Precedents

·            Understanding the Oral Record

·            Pragmatic Considerations

8. Morris the Negotiator

·            Cross-Cultural Understanding

·            Treaty 3

·            Treaty 4

·            Treaty 5

·            Treaty 6

Part IV: Indian Affairs

9. Alexander Morris and Indian Affairs

·            Taking on the Role

·            Problems with Provencher

·            The Structure of Administration

·            Morris and the Sioux

·            Treaties 1 and 2: The “Outside Promises”

·            Implementing Treaties 3 – 6

·            Removed from Power

10. Pride and Satisfaction

·            The Treaties of Canada

·         Conclusion

·         List of Abbreviations

·         References

·         Bibliography

·         Treaty 6–Reproductions of pages 1, 5, 6, and 8

·         Treaty Map

About the Author

Robert J. Talbot is originally from the Treaty 4 area, having grown up in Regina. He first became interested in the numbered treaties while an undergraduate student, when a chance encounter with former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations president Perry Bellegarde convinced him that the treaties were more significant than his high school history texts had let on. Mr. Talbot is an Ottawa-based historian with an extensive interest in Aboriginal/governmental relations. He has been a researcher for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and Canadian Heritage, has presented papers on Aboriginal and Canadian history at a number of important academic conferences, and has published in Mens: Revue de l’histoire intelectuelle de l’amérique française on the topic of anglophone-francophone relations in Canada. He is currently working toward the completion of a PhD in History at the University of Ottawa, where he has also taught Canadian history.