Online Materials, Federal Policy, Week 2, Lecture 2

Similarities between America & Canada in the 19th Century

Assimilation

1. agriculture
2. Christianity
3. education

• land hunger among non-natives
• paternalism
• underfunded Indian service
• reservation/reserve policy
• assumption of assimilation
• railroad/infrastructure development on Native lands
• gold rushes

Differences between US & Canada

• Canada-oriented to Britain/US independent
• states had less power in US, individual territories more powerful in Canad
• smaller settler population in Canada,
  
• Canada: more willing to recognize tribal groups
• more violent conflicts in US Civil war with natives than Canadian confederates had with 1st nations

Pacific Northwest:

• maritime fur trade-1792-1812
• Indians were shrewd traders
• Indians greatly controlled the trade relationship
• fairly peaceful co-existence
• cultural change-not very disruptive
• Columbia river, essential to trade
• forts: new habitats for Indian traders
• Indians & whites both wanted monopolies
• treaty period between 1850 and 1871
• Columbia River Treaties
• Douglas treaties
• 
  

Week 2 Online Materials

• colonization > designation of tribes, ignores fluidity
• colonial efforts of Spanish, British, Americans, Canadians
  
• destroyed world Indians created by 1500

major themes:

• 1. disease
• 2. trade
• 3. Christianity & conversion
• 4. land
• 5. conflict among European nations
• 6. conflict among Indian people
• 7. resistance to incursion
• 8. exploration
• 9. collection of information
• 10. comparative conquests

Don Juan de Onate letter:

• Spanish: conquered American west 200 years before British
• conquest: taxation, servitude, slavery, land grants, resistance, military force, mixed populations
  
• religious & economic conquest
• war justified if natives weren't Christianized
• northern colonists empowered
• natives were forced to work in mines
• slavery, fundamental to the economy
• threat of terror for those that didn't submit
• wanted mines & conversions
• Acoma uprising: organized attack on Spanish settlers
• Pueblos vs. the Spanish
• English, less concerned with capturing Indian labor than Spanish

English approach

• 1. separation, not integration
• 2. steal land, not labor
• 3. land cession
• 4. trade relations
• 5. assimilation
• 6. enlarged fur trading routes
• 7. integrated Native economies into a world economy
• 8. based on commercial relationships
• 9. used Indian labor not slave labor
• worst exposures: international marketplace, intertribal competition, liquor and guns

Settlements

• British had to claim land they occupied
• 1. treaty negotiations
  
• 2. policed settlers @ frontier
• 3. Proclamation: temporary boundary line, monopoly on future lands for crown, native right to lands they occupied
• 4. Continental Congress: can't make settlement on lands claimed by Indians without authority of Congress
• 5. no thought of pluralistic society-cohabitation of Indians & whites

Documents:

• 1. Royal Proclamation of 1763
• 2. Onate Acoma
• 3. Juan de Oñate statue by Reynaldo Rivera