NORTH-WEST INDIAN TREATIES 



The British Crown, in acquiring territories beyond the 

 seas, has in general been conceded the high honor of dealing 

 kindly with aboriginal races. Perhaps nowhere has this fact 

 been more manifest than in Canada since it came into the 

 possession of Great Britain on the 9th of September, 

 1760. As early as 1781 Governor-General Hald'imand, 

 through Lieutenant-Governor Robert Sinclair, paid 

 the Indians £5,000, or $20,000, for the surrender of a small 

 island in the Strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan. In 

 1874 the Crown obtained from the Mississagua Indians the 

 surrender of a large tract of land between Lakes Erie and 

 Ontario; and in 1793 by letters patent, granted the greater 

 part of it to the Chiefs, warriors and people of the Six Nations 

 as a reward for their attachment and fidelity to King George 

 the Third. Almost every year since one agreement or more 

 has been made with the Indians of what was long known as 

 Upper Canada, securing, by compensation, the surrender of 

 portions of territory. Two of the largest of these transactions 

 or treaties were negotiated in 1850 by Hon. William Benjamin 

 Robinson, through one of which the Ojibway Indians ceded 

 the lands between Lake Huron and the Height of Land which 

 divides the waters flowing into the Lake of the Woods ; and by 

 the other a similar tract of land west of Lake Superior. In 

 1862, Hon. William McDougall, then Superintendent-General 

 of Indian Affairs, and his Deputy, William Spragge, Esq., 

 made a treaty with the Indians of Manitoulin Islands for the 

 surrender of the same to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. 



But after the Confederation of the Provinces, and upon 

 the Dominion of Canada obtaining by purchase from the 

 Honorable Hudson's Bay Company, through the British Gov- 

 ernment, the transfer in 1870 of all the territory between the 

 Height of Land above mentioned and the Rocky Mountains, 

 and extending from the United States boundary to the Arctic 

 Ocean, a somewhat more comprehensive policy was adopted 

 in dealing with the Indians of said territory than obtained un- 

 der Old Canada. In regard to all such portions of the trans- 

 ferred country as were required for settlement, or for 

 mining, lumbering or transportation purposes, treaties were 

 made. Though the sovereign right to the soil was still held 

 to be in the Crown, yet it was recognized that there was an 



