Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

Pennsylvania, and Ohio regions. The Huron, Neutral, Petun, and

Tobacco tribes inhabited the southern Ontario frontier while the Sen-

eca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk formed the League of

Five Nations or the Iroquois Confederacy along the southern shore of

Lakes Ontario and Erie and the upper St. Lawrence River. After pro-

longed warfare, the Five Nations Iroquois drove out their northern

kinfolk by the mid-17th century.

Initially a traditional hunting and ﬁ shing people like the neighboring

Algonquians, the Iroquois evolved into a primarily seminomadic and

agricultural people. While men were responsible for hunting, ﬁ shing,

trading, warfare, and clearing the land for cultivation, women assumed

the responsibility of planting, cultivating, and harvesting the farm

crops, notably corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. The fertility of the soil,

therefore, became the major criterion for choosing the sites of the

stockaded villages around which their cultivated ﬁ elds were located.

The village sites inevitably had to be moved every 10 to 15 years when

the soil and available ﬁ rewood became exhausted.

The semisedentary life of the Iroquoian agricultural existence neces-

sitated dwellings more comfortable and permanent than the conical

birch-bark tipis or domed wigwams hastily built by their roving Algon-

quian neighbors. Accordingly, within stockaded villages of 1,500 to

2,500 people, 10 to 30 families belonging to the same clan lived together

in dwellings known as longhouses. These single-story, apartmentlike

rectangular complexes, constructed of a framework of small timbers and

covered with sheets of elm or cedar bark, stretched upwards of 60 yards

in length by 12 yards in width, with a 10-foot corridor running down

the middle of the house. Residence in these households was matrilocal.

A man could only marry a woman from outside of his clan, whereupon

he would move into his wife’s longhouse as a kind of guest. Moreover,

descent, inheritance, and succession followed the female line. Several

matrilineages comprised a clan, and three to 10 clans whose members

were scattered in various villages comprised a tribe.

The tribe formed the basis of the highly developed political organiza-

tion that became the Five Nations Confederacy by the late 15th cen-

tury. Formed to promote common action in external affairs, the Five

Nations Confederacy was governed by a council of 50 permanent and

hereditary chiefs who dealt with disputes among the tribes, conducted

negotiations, and decided on peace or war. The Huron adopted a simi-

lar political system to counteract their Iroquois enemies. The confed-

eracy gave the Iroquois a degree of political coherence that enabled it

to emerge as the most powerful military force among Canada’s Native

people. But foreshadowing the future Canadian Confederation, the

central council could not always control the ambitions of individual

tribal leaders who were all too willing to assert their authority in

domestic affairs and to advance their parochial interests at the expense

of national unity.

Plains

Unlike their Iroquois and Algonquian neighbors to the east, the indig-

enous people of the western Prairie region had little or no direct con-

tact with European explorers and traders until well into the 18th

century. The estimated 30,000 Natives of the Canadian plains belonged

to three linguistic families. The Algonquian-speaking people included

the Blackfoot of southern Alberta and the Plains Cree and Plains Ojibwa

in the Saskatchewan River valley and the Lake Winnipeg region. The

Assiniboine and Sioux of southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan spoke

the Siouan languages. The numerically small Scarcee tribe in the Rocky

Mountain foothills spoke an Athapascan tongue.

Although they occupied the rich agricultural prairie lands, the Plains

people had neither the tools, the knowledge, nor the necessity to till the

fertile soil. Instead, the immense herds of buffalo that roamed over and

fed upon these grasslands was the foundation of Plains culture. Buffalo

A Buffalo Rift, an 1867 painting by Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–74), depicts Plains Indians

hunting their chief staple by driving the herd over a cliff.

(Library and Archives Canada C-000403)

THE NATURAL DOMAIN

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

meat was the dietary staple, either cooked directly or ground and mixed

with fat and berries to produce pemmican. Buffalo hide was used for

clothing, footwear, shields, and cover for the conically shaped tipis that

served as homes. Buffalo bones, hooves, and horns provided tools,

weapons, and utensils. Buffalo hair and sinew was used for thread and

bowstrings. Buffalo dung was a source of fuel on the treeless plain.

The dependence on hunting buffalo along with antelope, deer, and

grouse dictated a nomadic existence. The constant search for buffalo

herds inhibited extensive social or tribal organization. Most tribes con-

sisted of loosely organized and independent bands. Only in midsummer,

when the buffalo were concentrated in large herds, would the bands

come together for a few weeks in one large communal hunting drive.

Once the well-organized buffalo hunt ended, the bands dispersed to their

own encampments to prepare for the harsh winter. Intertribal trade and

raiding brought the horse to the Canadian plains by the end of the 17th

century. The immediate result was an improvement in hunting tech-

nique, as people no longer had to follow the buffalo herd on foot. But in

addition to enhancing the mobility of the Plains people, the use of the

horse intensiﬁ ed their sense of independence from each other, which in

turn would render them vulnerable to European encroachment.

Paciﬁ c Coast and Plateau

Almost half of the Native population of Canada lived in modern-day

British Columbia on the eve of European contact. Moreover, the coastal

and interior regions of British Columbia had the most linguistically

diverse indigenous population. Despite their proximity to one another,

the peoples living along the Paciﬁ c coast and in the interior plateau

region evolved as distinct cultural communities primarily because of

the isolating effects of the towering Cordilleran mountain ranges.

The people of the Paciﬁ c belong to ﬁ ve unrelated language families

consisting of 19 distinct languages. Among the major tribes strung

along the coast from north to south are the Tlingit and the Haida of

nearby Queen Charlotte Island, each of whom speaks a unique lan-

guage that has no known relationship to any other. Immediately to the

south of the Tlingit are people who speak three languages of the Tsim-

shian language family. The Kwakwala or Kwakiutl to the south of the

Tsimshian and the Nootka on the western coast of Vancouver Island

are part of the Wakashan language family, while the southwest coastal

Salish and the inland Bella Coola are members of the large Salishan

language family.

The coastal people made good use of the abundant marine and forest

resources of their region. They were capable ﬁ shers and sea hunters,

depending largely on salmon, seal, and sea otter for food, clothing, and

tools. The dense forests also provided them with ample deer, elk, bear,

and mountain goat, in addition to giant cedar and ﬁ r timbers for their

long dugout canoes. These seaworthy canoes, with a capacity of as

many as 50 adults, enabled them to travel great distances to raid and

trade with their neighbors. The giant timbers were also split with antler

wedges into wide, smooth planks and used to build massive communal

houses. The tall, straight trunks were worked with stone and later iron

tools (derived from trade with Europeans) into elaborately sculptured

totem poles that depicted the crests and legendary histories of the chief-

tains’ families.

The abundance of resources encouraged the Paciﬁ c coast peoples to

live in relatively permanent villages close to navigable water under the

leadership of two or three hereditary clan chiefs. United by kinship,

dialect, or common territorial interest, villages were generally indepen-

dent of each other, although in times of war a chief of commanding

personality and ﬁ ghting skill might form a temporary alliance with other

villages in the area. Village society was organized on the basis of a rigid

class system, in which people were generally divided into three ranks—

nobles, commoners, and slaves—that did not customarily intermarry.

Ojibway Indians Shooting the Rapids, a painting by Frederick Arthur Verner (1836–1928),

illustrates the principal method of transportation that enabled Native peoples and Europeans

to open up the Canadian frontier.

(Library and Archives Canada, Bushnell Collection C-114480)

THE NATURAL DOMAIN

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

Similar to European feudal society, property was a basis of ranking and

a measure of afﬂ uence. The noble families claimed possession of all the

land and places for hunting, ﬁ shing, and gathering while the mass of the

common people sought their protection and employ. The slaves were

either prisoners of war or their offspring. They had no civil rights and

could be sold at their noble owner’s will. To enhance their prestige, the

chiefs and nobles would organize a potlatch, a special kind of feast that

involved a distribution of gifts according to the rank of the invited

guests. Potlatches were celebrated on all possible occasions, and noble

families often competed against each other to provide lavish gifts as a

sign of their wealth and generosity.

The indigenous peoples of the interior plateau region were less

populous and more scattered than their Paciﬁ c coast neighbors, primar-

ily because of the difﬁ culties of communication in this rugged area

between the coastal mountains and the Rockies. Included among the

Plateau societies are the Interior Salish of the Fraser River basin, an

eastern extension of the Salishan linguistic family; the Kutenai (Koote-

nay) in the Kootenay River basin to the east; and the Athapascan-speak-

ing people to the north, the largest of whom were the Carrier tribe.

Somewhat like their coastal neighbors, the seminomadic Plateau

people depended on salmon ﬁ shing and hunting for bear, caribou,

moose, deer, and mountain goat. But in custom, dress, and housing,

they resembled the people of the Plains far more than they did those to

the west. Moreover, Plateau community life resembled the simple orga-

nizations of the nomadic hunting people of the Eastern Woodlands. A

group of families related by blood or marriage formed a band led by a

hereditary chief or headman whose advice was sought and who would

represent the group in an informal council of older men and prominent

hunters. Each band had its own hunting and ﬁ shing territory, held in

common by all its families, who generally wandered and hunted together.

Wherever they came into contact with their stronger and more advanced

coastal neighbors, the inland people tended to adopt their ways of life,

including the hierarchical clan system and the potlatch. Unlike the

Paciﬁ c coast people who expressed their heritage through their art

forms, the Plateau people carried on a remote existence until the initial

European contact in the late 18th century.

Subarctic and Arctic

The inhospitable climate and terrain of the upper Canadian Shield, the

Hudson Bay Lowlands, the Mackenzie and Yukon River valleys, and the

northern reaches of the western Cordilleras have sustained a widely scat-

tered and sparsely populated Subarctic cultural group. In fact, Subarctic

population densities were among the lowest in the world, as little more

than 60,000 Natives occupied an area in excess of 2 million square miles

on the eve of sustained European contact. Most of the Subarctic people

were not organized politically into tribes; but neighboring bands, speak-

ing a common language dialect, exploiting the resources of the same

territory, or closely related by family ties or marriage tended to form

identiﬁ able groups. Broadly speaking, the Subarctic peoples belong to

two regionally based language families. The Algonquian-speaking people

of the eastern Subarctic include the Innu (Montagnais-Neskapi) of north-

ern Quebec and Labrador, the Cree in the Hudson Bay Lowland and

upper Shield regions of Quebec and Ontario, and the Ojibwa northwest

of Lake Superior. More than 20 Athapascan languages are known to be

spoken among the people of the western Subarctic who are known today

as the Dene. Among the major groups spread across the Northwest and

Yukon territories from Hudson Bay to Alaska were the Chippewyan,

Slave, Beaver, Dogrib, Sekani, Tutchone, and Kutchin.

The Subarctic peoples were primarily hunters and forest dwellers

who lived in bands of 25 to 30 members. With no permanent villages,

each band moved frequently within a deﬁ ned territory in search of

caribou, beaver, and hare in the northern districts and bear, moose, and

buffalo in the southern districts. When game was in short supply, they

ﬁ shed in the numerous rivers and lakes. During the summer, several

local bands often resided together to take advantage of prime hunting

and ﬁ shing sites. Most Subarctic bands did not have formal chiefs prior

to European contact; instead, they followed the leadership of a senior

male who took the initiative in undertaking particular tasks such as

trading, warfare, and communal hunting. All adult males and females

had a voice in the decision-making process, and families or individuals

who disagreed with decisions affecting the band were free to join

another band. Such a degree of personal autonomy and ﬂ exibility in

social organization helped the Subarctic peoples respond to the oppor-

tunities and challenges of their environment.

Overcoming the limitations of the environment was an even greater

challenge for the Native people of the Arctic region. Historically known

as Eskimos, an Algonquian word roughly meaning “eaters of raw

meat,” the Arctic people in recent times have preferred to call them-

selves Inuit, simply meaning “people.” They speak one common lan-

guage, Inukitut or Eskimo-Aleut, although as many as six dialects are

THE NATURAL DOMAIN

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

spoken throughout the Arctic region. The Inuit are divided into eight

main tribal groups, some of which are named after the regions in which

they are located: the Labrador, the Ungava of northeastern Quebec, the

Bafﬁ n Island, the Iglulik along the northwestern shore of Hudson Bay,

the Caribou along the mainland coast west of Hudson Bay, the Netsilik

along the Arctic coast west of Hudson Bay, the Copper of Victoria

Island and the adjacent mainland region, and the nearly extinct Mack-

enzie whose territory in the Mackenzie River delta was taken over in

the 20th century by Alaskan Natives to form the Western Arctic Inuit

community.

Over thousands of years, the Inuit developed from their Paleoeskimo

ancestors, notably the Dorset and Thule cultures, a special ability to

adapt to their barren and polar environment by making inventive use

of meager local resources. They hunted caribou, polar bear, seal, and

whale not only for their food but also for all the various necessities of

life. The skins of these animals, for example, were used to make cloth-

ing and footwear, tentlike summer shelters, and both single-seated

water craft known as kayaks and larger vessels called umiaks. From

bone and ivory, the Inuit made bows and arrows, spears and harpoons,

knives, ﬁ shhooks, and runners for sleds pulled by dogs over snow and

ice. From seal, walrus, and whale, they derived oil for fuel and lighting.

Out of blocks of ice and snow, they constructed their dome-shaped

winter dwelling known as the igloo.

The need to wander incessantly over land, ice, and water in search of

game and sea mammals made for rather transitory community organiza-

tion. Approximately 20,000 Inuit were scattered in small communities

throughout the nearly 1 million square miles of Arctic frontier on the

eve of sustained European contact in the late 18th century. The most

important social and political unit was the regional band, several of

which together constituted a tribal group consisting of 500 to 1,000

members. During the winter, regional bands tended to congregate in

groups of 100 to 200 people to hunt seal. But in the summer they would

disperse into smaller bands of two to ﬁ ve families to pursue their own

destinies and occasionally to form new groupings in response to social

needs and desires to interact with kin living elsewhere. Although elder

men whose strength of character and physical skills gave them prestige

in the community that allowed them to wield a certain amount of inﬂ u-

ence, they were not chiefs and possessed no real authority over their

own or neighboring groups. Such a loosely knit community organiza-

tion reﬂ ected the precariousness of life in an environment where human

settlement was governed by seasonally available food resources.

Prior to sustained European contact, in essence, the Native peoples

had already laid the foundation for future human development in the

northern half of North America in three signiﬁ cant respects. First, a

sustainable economy was based on the exploitation of abundant, albeit

unevenly distributed, natural resources. Traditional Native technology

negated the possibility of resource depletion or of reﬁ nement of

resources for industrial production. Second, society was invariably

multicultural and multilingual. Vast distances, geographical barriers,

and limited transportation technology often prevented an intermin-

gling of these diverse native cultures. Third, geography dictated the

persistence of regionalism as the basis for political or social organiza-

tion. Accordingly, lines of communication and exchange for the Native

peoples were more often north and south than east and west. Into this

context came Europeans with their modern technology and peculiar

concepts of property ownership and nationally based political organiza-

tions, which over a period of ﬁ ve centuries would profoundly alter the

natural domain of Canada.

THE NATURAL DOMAIN

ACCIDENTAL REDISCOVERY

(986–1608)

lthough Canada was originally discovered by anonymous Native

peoples, the ﬁ rst attempts to record the process of exploring and

identifying the unknown land were undertaken by European naviga-

tors and adventurers. Yet the earliest moments of European contact are

almost as mysterious as the prehistoric period. A partial explanation

for this ambiguous beginning lies in the serendipitous nature of the

European “rediscovery” of the “New World” and the disappointment

that inevitably followed. In The Oxford History of the American People,

historian Samuel Eliot Morison points out: “America was discovered

accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else;

when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the

next ﬁ fty years was done in the hope of getting through it or around it”

(Morison 1994, 55).

While Morison was referring to Christopher Columbus’s discovery

of the West Indies in 1492, similar circumstances and sentiments sur-

rounded the early European landings in Canada. Disillusioned by their

failure to fulﬁ ll their destiny, the early explorers tended to make a cur-

sory note of Canada’s existence and continued hopefully in their quest

for more rewarding discoveries.

The Norse Voyages

The accident and ambiguity of the European rediscovery of Canada is

epitomized by the Norse voyages of the late 10th and early 11th centu-

ries (McGhee 1989; Morison 1971; Quinn 1977). In search of more

farmland, Scandinavian mariners, known as Norsemen or Vikings, had

ventured northwestwardly from the European mainland to discover

and colonize Iceland about 874 and Greenland in 985. According to

ancient Norse sagas, trader Bjarni Herjolfsson was blown off course on

his way from Iceland to Greenland in 986 when he became the ﬁ rst

known European to sight the mainland of North America. Having

likely reached the coast of Labrador, he decided against landing, pur-

portedly concluding: “This land is unwinsome and ungainsome”

(Stefoff 1992, 15). In other words, the ﬁ rst recorded opinion about

North America was that it was neither pretty nor proﬁ table.

ACCIDENTAL REDISCOVERY