The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914 (35 page)

That West had never existed. But there had been a time, more than thirty years before, when the Indians had ridden free across the empty grasslands, chasing the buffalo, and the Police had patrolled the plains as a quasi-military force, driving the Montana whiskey traders out of their armed forts and back across the border. Now the Indians were hived in reserves, trying to learn the fundamentals of agriculture, and the Police had become glorified civil servants. Since firearms were taboo, gunplay was almost unknown. In 1905, there were only nine
murders in the territories that had become provinces. The statistics remained stable. As the commissioner reported some years later, the causes were always the same: “jealousy, drunkenness, desire of gain, quarrels and revenge. They are in no sense the result of lawlessness.”

The most serious crime among the Indians and also among the Police (and for which constables were instantly dismissed) was drunkenness. The Indians drank because they had no future and their past was destroyed; the white man had taken away their religion, their language, their dress, and their culture. The Police drank because they felt isolated and frustrated; like the Indians, they belonged to another era, and their needs were made subordinate to the government’s policy of filling up the West with farmers. Between these two pioneer groups, so different in background and culture, a bond sprang up. “The first thing I learned on the force,” one veteran wrote, “was that the Mounties felt a lot more sympathy for the Indians than they did for most of the white men there.”

Both were victims of departmental penny pinching. As in most elections, the Liberal party in 1896 had attacked what it called lavish spending by the Tory government. When Sifton took over, he slashed away with a will. Personnel were dropped, agencies reorganized, salaries reduced. The Indian Department had had its own deputy minister, but Sifton made two jobs into one, giving both the Indian Department and Immigration to James Smart, who, knowing nothing about Indians, paid very little attention to them. When in 1902 the Indians again got a deputy minister in the person of Frank Pedley, the section was still the poor relation of Sifton’s organization. Sifton’s overall budget was quintupled during his tenure; that of the Indian Department went up by a slim 30 per cent.

Rations were slashed. One civil servant expressed the general philosophy when he declared that the natives would never be self-sufficient “if officers continue the system of handling Indians through bribing them with food.” By 1905, the various tribes were making do on three-quarters of a pound of food less per head a day than they had received in 1897. One Indian agent went so far as to suggest that this belt tightening was to the natives’ benefit because “not only have these supplies been saved to the government, but it has tended to make the Indians more self-reliant and industrious and consequently more easily handled. Besides, the Indian is more healthy as no doubt he has suffered from over-feeding and lying around in his camp – now they get more exercise and have something to live for.”

In reducing medical assistance to the tribes, Sifton used the same
arguments that would be marshalled against universal medicare half a century and more later. “The more medical attendance that is provided, the more they want,” he claimed. That was the philosophy of most of his agents. As one put it, “the more the government assists them the more they will ask for.”

Penny pinching all but destroyed the educational system on the reserves. The Indians required superior teachers, but it was almost impossible to get teachers with third-class certificates when the three-hundred-dollar annual salary paid on the reserves was only half that paid in the cities. As Joseph Armstrong told the House of Commons, the only qualification a teacher needed was that he have the right politics. The general Western attitude was that it was hopeless to try to educate the Indians. But the experiment was never really attempted because the government wasn’t prepared to pay for it.

The traditional Indian way of life collided with the Western work ethic. All the tenets of the agrarian philosophy – thrift, ambition, Christian morality, the mystique of the soil – had little meaning to the tribes. Ottawa’s policy was to keep the Indians quiet on the reserves, out of the political limelight, and with the help of the churches to prepare them for a different culture and prevent their exploitation. Some aspects of this policy did not differ greatly from the policy for the Galicians, the Doukhobors, or the British. The Indians were to be assimilated, turned into Christian Canadians, speaking English, wearing “civilized clothing,” and working the soil.

Mike Mountain Horse of the Blood tribe would always remember his first hours at the residential school to which he was sent. His blanket, breech cloth, leggings, shirt, and moccasins were taken from him, and he was plunged into a fibre tub of steaming water and well scrubbed. Then his long braids were snipped off, his hair shorn and trimmed, and he was presented with a white child’s suit of clothes: knee pants, blouse, lace collar, a tiny cap with an emblem sewn on it, and shoes. None of this fazed him; in fact, he strutted about like a young peacock. It was only in later years that Indians like Mike Mountain Horse began to ask themselves why it was necessary to remove these visible signs of an ancient culture in the interests of a studied conformity.

The Western tribes had hunted the buffalo. This extraordinary animal, roaming the plains in the tens of thousands, had supplied them with hide, bones, and flesh – everything they needed for clothing, shelter, fuel, food, and culture. The transformation of hunters into farmers is, historically, a process that requires centuries. But such was
the optimism of the times that the government expected to achieve it in a few years.

Since it was universally agreed that the Indian culture was inferior, no one disputed the benefits this policy would bring to the Indians, least of all the agents of the Indian Department, whose annual reports tended to be patronizing. One praised the sacrifice of the missionaries “whose duty it is to lead these sheep of the wilderness to higher moral values”; another wrote that “to uplift the Indian, his whole character has to be reformed.” The answer lay in working the soil, the reserve being “a forcing ground where the lesson of work may be imparted.” But, since the Indian’s idea of work was quite different from that of the Western farmer, “he must be kept at work by a ceaseless vigilance.” In a 1902 editorial titled “Civilizing the Indians,” the Calgary
Herald
bluntly advocated that all Indians be forced to work.

With such assessments the Westerners had no quarrel. Thousands had been subtly lured to Canada with the philosophy that agriculture was a noble occupation that equipped the farmer and his sons for future success. James Smart’s 1898 report to Parliament on Indian Affairs gave voice to the concept that would have its echoes in the department’s most successful pamphlet,
The Last Best West
.

“…  the initial step toward the civilization of our Indians,” Smart wrote, “should be their adoption of agricultural pursuits.… Cultivation of the soil necessitates remaining in one spot and then exerts an educational influence of a general character. It keeps prominently before the mind the relation of cause and effect, together with the dependence upon a higher power. It teaches, moreover, the necessity for systematic work at the proper season, for giving attention to detail, and patience in waiting for results.

“It inculcates furthermore the idea of individual proprietorship, habits of thrift, a due sense of the value of money and the importance of its investment in useful directions.”

But it was hard to convince the Indians of these high-flown advantages. They didn’t give a hoot about the future. As one agent noted, “a net put in at nightfall gives at dawn a full day’s eating. A crop put in during early April must be watched and tended for three months and a half before the time of harvest.” The concept of thrift was foreign to them. Hoarding, in Indian eyes, was a sin. Agents railed against “the giving away evil,” to use David Laird’s phrase. The Indian “would almost burst with indignation if not allowed … to show how big his heart was and give away a good deal of his wealth.”

What was seen as philanthropy on the part of a generous white man
was thought of as foolishness when indulged in by a native. “As soon as an Indian … acquires a little money over and above his present needs he just itches all over to give a dance and feast to show the other fellows … what a big hearted chap he is, and probably impress the other sex.…” So wrote the agent at Portage la Prairie in 1902, oblivious to the fact that he was also describing the accepted mores of his own society. To solve the problem it was generally agreed that all children must be taken from their parents and sent to boarding schools to remove them from “home influences, and consequently the more speedy and thorough inculcation of the habits, customs and modes of thought of the white man.”

“Indolent” was the word used over and over again to describe the Indian’s reluctance to work the soil. This trait, together with his apparent lack of ambition, his improvidence, his so-called immorality, his refusal to espouse Christianity – in short, his inability and disinclination to conform to white standards – baffled and frustrated the department in Ottawa. This frustration was expressed in the government’s attempt to stamp out the Sun Dance, the one rite above all others that had an enormous religious and sociological significance for all the Western tribes. The Sun Dance, with its days of feasting, ceremony, giving, and ritual, can be described as roughly equivalent to the white man’s Christmas in importance. To forbid it was akin to forbidding all Yuletide festivities in a Christian society.

It is the last day of the Sun Dance of the Sarcees, near a copse of tall timber on the north side of the Elbow River at the time when the chokecherries and saskatoon berries ripen. The sweat lodge has been built by the young men out of one hundred poplar poles with one hundred stones set in hollows inside. The privileged have already taken part in the sweat-bath ceremonies, accompanied by twenty prayers of invocation
.

The Sun Dance lodge itself has also been constructed of sweet-smelling balm of Gilead poplar, with a smaller lodge within, the tepees of the tribe surrounding it in an irregular circle, that of the hostess and her husband at the centre. The woman has arranged the ceremony in gratitude for answered prayers: a sick relative has recovered, and so she is honouring the pledge she made – to be absolutely faithful to her husband and to mount this ceremony in return. The pair are painted dark red – not just their skin but also their hair, their clothes, and their moccasins. They have fasted for several days. From this ritual they will derive great honour
.

The young men have brought in a great tree which has become the central pole in the Sun Dance lodge. A nest of small willows has been lashed in place at its crotch. Offerings of clothing, drygoods, and moccasins are attached to it. There have been days of dancing, chanting, and drum beating. Chiefs and warriors have come to the lodge to recite and act out their exploits. One hundred buffalo tongues, secured in the hunt long before the ceremony, have been distributed, all according to ritual and custom
.

It is time. Two young men who have taken vows to undergo torture enter the enclosure prepared for them, disrobing except for belt and breech cloth. Fillets of sage are placed about their heads, ankles, and wrists; a whistle is suspended about the neck; their bodies are rubbed with white clay. So adorned they enter the main lodge and lie down on their backs on buffalo robes
.

Others who have previously endured the ordeal knead their breasts and attach the thongs, asking whether the cuts should be made deep or shallow. The reply is interpreted in the opposite fashion so that if a young man says “shallow” it means he wishes a deep cut. The flesh and skin are drawn up, a cut made, a stick thrust through the opening. Two ropes hang from the centre pole. These are secured to the stick with a loop. The Sun Dance is about to begin
.

The young men approach the pole, embrace it, pray silently. Now they come into dancing position, cross their arms four times on their breasts, jerking at the ropes to elongate the folds of pierced flesh. They dance to the east as the singing begins, then to the west, going through a semicircle on the north side of the pole so that they always face the sun. They blow on their whistles, lean back to stretch the thongs taut until the flesh is torn loose and they are free. The longer the dance continués before their breasts are torn, the longer, it is said, they will live on this earth
.

When the dance ends and there are no more young men to be honoured, the camp circle is broken and the ritual is over
.

The official reason for the ban on the Sun Dance was that torture was involved. This was a pretext, because only certain tribes practised self-torture, yet all Sun Dances came under some form of interdict. The real reason, expressed in dozens of agency reports, was that the celebration of the Sun Dance disturbed the normal work pattern of the Indians.

“A vigorous effort was made during the year to suppress illegal dancing on most of the reserves,” David Laird, the Indian Commissioner
of the North West Territories, reported in 1902. “On the Blood reserve, however, I am sorry to say, a sun dance was held.… These large gatherings are of a very injurious character; much valuable time is wasted when they ought to be occupied with their hay-making … it can scarcely be doubted that besides the loss of time, immorality, gambling and other such evils were practised.…

“In a few years it may be hoped that these foolish practices will die out; but measures must be taken to hasten their end. They are vestiges of savage life, and while they continue … the work of civilizing must be comparatively at a standstill. The farming instructor, the teacher, and the missionary cannot accomplish much among people who give themselves for weeks together to the excesses of a heathen celebration.”