Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada

498 Pages·2000·2.226 MB·English

by  J.R. Miller

SKYSCRAPERS HIDE THE HEAVENS
Highly acclaimed when the first edition appeared in 1989, Sky-
scrapers Hide the Heavens is the first comprehensive account of
Indian-white relations throughout Canada’s history. J.R. Miller
charts the deterioration of the relationship from the initial, mutu-
ally beneficial contact in the fur trade to the current impasse in
which Indians are resisting displacement and marginalization.
This new edition is the result of substantial revision to incorpo-
rate current scholarship and bring the text up to date. It includes
new material on the North, and reflects changes brought about
by the Oka crisis, the sovereignty issue, and the various court
decisions of the 1990s. It also includes new material on residential
schools, treaty making, and land claims.
J.R.MILLER is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
Your buildings tall, alien,
Cover the land;
Unfeeling concrete smothers,
windows glint
Like water to the sun.
No breezes blow
Through standing trees;
No scent of pine lightens my burden.
I see your buildings rising skyward,
majestic,
Over the trails where once men walked,
Significant rulers of this land
Who still hold the aboriginal title
In their hearts
By traditions known
Through eons of time.
Relearning our culture is not difficult,
Because those trails I remember
And their meaning I understand.
While skyscrapers hide the heavens,
They can fall.
Rita Joe, Poems of Rita Joe
(Halifax: Abanaki Press 1978)
Reprinted by permission of the author
S K Y S C R A P E R S
HIDE THE HEAVENS
A History of
Indian-White Relations in Canada
Third Edition
J.R. MILLER
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
©University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2000
Toronto Buffalo London
First edition 1989
Reprinted in paperback 1990
Revised edition 1991
Reprinted 1991, 1994, 1997
Third edition 2000
Reprinted 2001
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-8153-3
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Miller, J.R. (James Rodger), 1943–
Skyscrapers hide the heavens : a history of Indian-white relations in Canada
3rd ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-8153-3
1. Indians of North America – Canada – History. 2. Indians of North America –
Canada – Government relations. 3. Indians of North America – First contact
with Europeans – Canada. I. Title.
E78.C2M54 2000 971(cid:99).00497 C99-933096-9
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publish-
ing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
The first edition of this book was published with the help of a grant from the
Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
To the memory of my mother and my father
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface to the Third Edition ix
Preface to the First Edition xii
INTRODUCTION
1 Indians and Europeans at the Time of Contact 3
PART ONE: COOPERATION
2 Early Contacts in the Eastern Woodlands 25
3 Commercial Partnership and Mutual Benefit 50
4 Military Allies through a Century of Warfare 72
PART TWO: COERCION
5 From Alliance to ‘Irrelevance’ 103
6 Reserves, Residential Schools, and the Threat
of Assimilation 125
7 The Commercial Frontier on the Western Plains 148
8 Contact, Commerce, and Christianity on the Pacific 174
9 Resistance in Red River and the Numbered Treaties 197
10 The North-West Rebellion 225
viii Contents
11 The Policy of the Bible and the Plough 254
12 Residents and Transients in the North 283
PART THREE: CONFRONTATION
13 The Beginnings of Political Organization 311
14 Land Claims and Self-Government from the
White Paper to Guerin 336
15 Meech, Oka, Charlottetown, Nass, and Ottawa 364
16 Do We Learn Anything from History? 392
Notes 413
Select Bibliography 449
Illustration Credits 465
Index 467
Maps
Indian nations of Canada / xvi
Indian nations of northeastern North America at contact / 5
The Ohio and Illinois country, 1754 / 80
French possessions in North America, 1750 / 82
Effect of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 / 89
Location of western nations, 1821 / 152
Indian nations of British Columbia / 176
The numbered treaties, 1871–1921 / 207
North-West uprising, 1885 / 239
Preface to the Third Edition
This edition attempts to address the numerous significant devel-
opments in Native-newcomer relations since the appearance of
the first edition in 1989. What needs to be addressed are both the
historical and the historiographical developments that have trans-
formed the field in the last decade. So far as actual events are
concerned, Oka, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,
Delgamuukw, and Nunavut are only the most prominent of the
many incidents and events that have kept Aboriginal issues in the
news throughout the 1990s. More than the media have paid
attention; academic and other researchers have turned to Native
history and the history of Native-newcomer relations in greatly
increased numbers and have produced a mountain of literature.
This recent scholarship and the high-profile events that were in
part its inspiration have prompted this revision.
This edition incorporates the new scholarship in varying
degrees throughout the text. Some sections, most notably the
early chapters, are relatively lightly sprinkled with additional ref-
erences, but others, such as the chapter on military relations,
have been heavily rewritten. A few topics, particularly relations in
the North, are the subject of completely new material. The sec-
tions in the first edition that covered the period since 1970 have
been drastically restructured and expanded to bring the treat-
ment up to the end of the 1990s.
What have not been revised are the main contours and princi-
pal interpretations of Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens. This edition