Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy

348 Pages·1990·23.64 MB·English

by  Sarah Carter

Lost Harvests
McGill Queen's Native and Northern Series
Bruce G. Trigger, Editor
1 When the Whalers Were Up North: 13 Cold Comfort: My Love Affair with
Inuit Memories from the Eastern the Arctic
Arctic Graham W. Rowley
Dorothy Harley Eber
14 The True Spirit and Original
2 The Challenge of Arctic Shipping: Intent of Treaty 7
Science, Environmental Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council
Assessment, and Human Values with Walter Hildebrandt, Dorothy First
David L. VanderZwaag and Cynthia Rider, and Sarah Carter
Lamson, Editors
15 This Distant and Unsurveyed
3 Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Country: A Woman's Winter at
Farmers and Government Policy Baffin Island, 1857-1858
Sarah Carter W. Gillies Ross
4 Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty: 16 Images of Justice
The Existing Aboriginal Right of Dorothy Harley Eber
Self-Government in Canada
17 Capturing Women: The
Bruce Clark
Manipulation of Cultural Imagery
5 Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: in Canada's Prairie West
Inuit Testimony Sarah A. Carter
David C. Woodman
18 Social and Environmental Impacts
6 Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and of the James Bay Hydro-electric
China Goods: The Maritime Fur Project
Trade of the Northwest Coast, Edited by James F. Hornig
1785-1841
19 Saqiyuq:
James R. Gibson
Stories from the Lives of Three
7 From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare: Inuit Women
The Story of the Western Reserves Nancy Wachowich in collaboration with
Helen Buckley Apphia Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak
Katsak, and Sandra Pikujak Katsak
8 In Business for Ourselves:
Northern Entrepreneurs 20 Justice in Paradise
Wanda A. Wuttunee Bruce Clark
9 For an Amerindian Autohistory: 21 Aboriginal Rights and Self-
An Essay on the Foundations of a Government:
Social Ethic The Canadian and Mexican
Georges E. Sioui Experience in North American
Perspective
10 Strangers Among Us
Edited by Curtis Cook and Juan D. Lindan
David Woodman
22 Harvest of Souls:
11 When the North Was Red:
Rhetoric, Writing, and the Christian
Aboriginal Education in Soviet
Mission in the Jesuit Relations
Siberia
Carole Blackburn
Dennis A. Bartels and Alice L. Bartels
23 Bounty and Benevolence
12 From Talking Chiefs to a Native
A Documentary History of
Corporate Elite: The Birth of Class
Saskatchewan Treaties
and Nationalism among Canadian
Frank Tough, Jim Miller, and
Inuit
Arthur J. Ray
Marybelle Mitchell
Lost Harvests
Prairie Indian Reserve
Farmers and
Government Policy
SARAH CARTER
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
McGill-Queen's University Press 1990
A
ISBN 0-7735-0755-8 (cloth)
ISBN 0-7735-0999-2 (paper)
Legal deposit fourth quarter 1990
Bibliotheque rationale du Quebec
First paperback edition 1993
Reprinted 2000
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book was first published with the help of a grant
from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities,
using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the
financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (BPIDP) for its publishing activities. It also
acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for
the Arts for its publishing program.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Carter, Sarah, 1954-
Lost harvests
(McGill-Queen's series in northern and native
studies; 3)
Incudes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7735-0755-8 (bound)
ISBN 0-7735-0999-2 (pbk.)
1. Indians of North America - Prairie Provinces -
Agriculture - History. 2. Indians of North America -
Prairie Provinces - Reservations - History. 3. Indians
of North America - Canada - Government relations -
1860-1951.1. Title. II. Series.
E92.0351990 3381'8712'o8997 C90-090179-9
This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc.
in 1o/12Palatino.
For Walter and Mary
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Illustrations between pages 114 and 115
Figures viii
Preface ix
Introduction 3
1 Two Solitudes: Myth and Reality of the
Plains Indian and Agriculture 15
2 The "Queen's Bounty": Government Re-
sponse to Indian Agitation for Agricultural
Assistance 50
3 The Home Farm Experiment 79
4 Assault upon the "Tribal" System: Govern-
ment Policy after 1885 130
5 The Pioneer Experience: Prairie Reserve
Agriculture 159
6 Prelude to Surrender: Severalty and "Peas-
ant" Farming 193
7 Without a Leg to Stand On: Undermining
Reserve Agriculture 237
Appendices 259
Notes 265
Bibliography 299
Index 317
Figures
1 Districts of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia,
ca 1900 xi
2 Subdivision of the Piapot reserve 206
3 Acres under cultivation, selected Indian
agencies, 1889-97 234
4 Acres under cultivation, selected Indian
agencies, 1889-97 235
Preface
S
The standard explanation for the failure of agriculture on western
Canadian reserves is that the Indians could not be convinced of the
value or necessity of the enterprise. It was believed that the sustained
labour required of them was alien to their culture and that the trans-
formation of hunters into farmers was a process that historically took
place over centuries. When I began to investigate the question of
why agriculture failed to provide reserve residents a living, I thought
I would add detail to this explanation but essentially retain it intact.
Before I got very far into the sources, however, I found that little
evidence existed to support this interpretation.
It was the Indians, not the government, that showed an early and
sustained interest in establishing agriculture on the reserves. Al-
though the government publicly proclaimed that its aim was to assist
Indians to adopt agriculture, little was done to put this course into
effect. In fact government policies acted to retard agriculture on the
reserves. The Indians had to persuade government officials of the
necessity and importance of agriculture. In treaty negotiations and
later assemblies, they sought assurance that a living by agriculture
would be provided to them, and they used every means at their
disposal to persuade a reluctant government that they be allowed
the means to farm. They proved anxious to farm and be independent
of government assistance, despite discouraging results year after
year. Not all Indians wished to farm but many did, and circum-
stances compelled some to consider this option at a time when there
were few others. In the decade after 1885, government policies made
it virtually impossible for reserve agriculture to succeed because the
farmers were prevented from using the technology required for ag-
ricultural activity in the West. The promotion of reserve land sur-
render after the turn of the century further precluded the hope that
agriculture could form the basis of a stable economy on reserves.