Plains and Woodland Indigenous Peoples in a Colonial Context

Orchestra, Port Alberni BC Residential School

 Overview

Long before European contact, the grasslands, parkland belts, and boreal forests of what is now western and central Canada were home to a rich diversity of Indigenous nations with sophisticated economies, governance systems, spiritual traditions, and inter-nation diplomacy. The story of these peoples in a colonial context is one of initial partnership and interdependence, followed by systematic dispossession, cultural suppression, and resilient resistance — a history whose consequences continue to unfold.

Pre-Contact Worlds

The Plains Nations

Indigenous habitation of the northern Great Plains dates back at least 10,000 years. Among the principal nations of the northern Plains were the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy) — comprising the Siksika, Kainai (Blood), Piikani (Peigan), and affiliated Tsuut'ina (Sarcee) — whose territory stretched from present-day Edmonton south into Montana and from the Rocky Mountains east to the Cypress Hills, encompassing roughly 28 million acres. Other Plains peoples included the Nakoda (Assiniboine), Nêhiyawak (Plains Cree), Plains Ojibwe (Saulteaux), Dakota/Lakota, and the Atsina (Gros Ventre).[^1][2][^3]

Plains cultures were organized around the bison (buffalo), which provided food, clothing, tools, and shelter. Pre-horse cultures used communal bison drives, buffalo jumps, and pounds — technologies requiring sophisticated collective organization. By approximately 1730, horses obtained from trade networks originating in the American Southwest transformed Plains life, dramatically expanding territorial range, hunting efficiency, and military power. The Grasslands National Park area alone preserves over 20,000 tipi rings and thousands of archaeological sites — among the largest concentrations of undisturbed pre-contact resources in Canada.[^4][5][^2][1]

The Woodland Peoples

The Woodland Cree (Sakāwithiniwak, also called Swampy Cree or Maskêkowiyiniwak) occupied vast boreal territories west of Hudson Bay and were the largest Indigenous group in what is now northern Alberta. Their economy centred on hunting caribou, moose, bear, and beaver, with large-group fishing and seasonal gathering. Woodland Cree social organization was based on kinship bands; the concept of wâhkotowin — the interrelatedness of all peoples, lands, and living things — was (and remains) central to their worldview.[^6][7]

The Anishinaabe (including the Ojibwe/Chippewa, Odawa, and Potawatomi, collectively the Three Fires Confederacy) held territories around the Great Lakes, with the Ojibwe as the westernmost branch, whose territory extended from Sault Ste. Marie to western Lake Superior. By the mid-18th century, Ojibwe communities expanded westward into parkland and prairie territories, forming deep kinship ties and alliances with the Cree and Nakoda.[^8]

The Fur Trade Era: Partnership, Dependency, and Disruption

First Contact and Alliance

The Woodland Cree were among the first Indigenous nations west of Hudson Bay to trade with European fur traders, as early as the 17th century. The establishment of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) posts on the Bay shore drew Cree and Assiniboine into elaborate networks of exchange, where they acted as both trappers and crucially important middlemen — acquiring European manufactured goods (axes, knives, cloth, firearms) and trading them deep into the interior. Far from passive recipients, Indigenous peoples controlled much of the early trade on their own terms, leveraging their geographic knowledge, linguistic skills, and kin networks.[^7][9][^10]

The Blackfoot Confederacy remained more peripheral to the earliest fur trade, preferring to receive European goods through intermediaries. The Nêhiyawak (Plains Cree) capitalized on this geography by positioning themselves as gun-suppliers to the Niitsitapi, who in return supplied horses — a mutually profitable alliance that reshaped the balance of power on the northern Plains through the 18th century.[^11][12][^13]

Epidemics and Population Collapse

European contact brought catastrophic disease. Smallpox epidemics struck repeatedly; the 1784 and 1838 epidemics severely reduced the Cree population. The Blackfoot Confederacy was devastated by a smallpox epidemic in 1837 that killed an estimated 6,000 people and effectively ended Blackfoot dominance on the northern Plains. A continent-wide smallpox epidemic of 1781–82 decimated half to two-thirds of the Cree and Nakoda populations of the Hudson Bay watershed, creating demographic vacuums that enabled Ojibwe westward expansion. Pre-contact Indigenous populations across what is now Canada ranged from 500,000 to over 2 million; post-contact disease wiped out up to 90% of certain populations.[^14][6][^4][8]

The Emerging Métis Nation

Out of the fur trade was born a new nation: the Métis. The children of European fur traders (predominantly French and Scottish) and First Nations women (especially Cree, Ojibwe, and Assiniboine) developed a distinct culture, language (Michif), and identity rooted in both the Plains bison hunt and the voyageur trade economy. By 1869, the Red River Settlement — centred at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers (present-day Winnipeg) — comprised roughly 9,800 French and English Métis alongside only 1,600 Euro-Canadian settlers. The Métis organized elaborate, militarily disciplined semi-annual bison hunts that became central to provisioning the entire fur trade network with pemmican.[^9][15][^16][17]

Colonial Consolidation: Treaties, Land, and Starvation

Transfer of Rupert's Land (1869)

The colonial turning point came in 1869, when the Dominion of Canada purchased Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company — a territory encompassing roughly 40% of modern Canada. Neither First Nations nor Métis living in this vast territory were consulted. The transaction brought over 100,000 Indigenous people formally under the authority of the new Canadian state. The Métis at Red River, led by Louis Riel, immediately established a provisional government to resist annexation without recognition of their rights, sparking the Red River Resistance (1869–70) and eventually securing the entry of Manitoba into Confederation.[^18][15][^16]

The Numbered Treaties (1871–1921)

Between 1871 and 1921, the Canadian government negotiated eleven Numbered Treaties covering the entirety of modern Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, as well as portions of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. Treaties 1 through 7 — covering the Prairie nations — were concluded between 1871 and 1877.[^19][20][^21]

In exchange for land access, Indigenous signatories were promised:

• Reserves set aside for exclusive First Nations use
• Annual annuity payments
• Hunting and fishing rights on unoccupied Crown lands
• Schools and teachers on reserves
• Farm equipment, animals, ammunition, and clothing[^22]

However, Indigenous leaders and contemporary scholars have documented fundamental asymmetries in how these treaties were understood. Research by Sheldon Krasowski drawing on oral history and eyewitness accounts demonstrates that First Nations — including the Cree, Anishinaabe, Saulteaux, Assiniboine, Siksika, and others — understood treaties as agreements to share the land with newcomers under conditions, not to surrender it. The colonial government's interpretation of "surrender" was, according to this analysis, a product of deliberate deception in treaty negotiations, not Indigenous consent.[^23][24]

Not all leaders accepted the terms. Plains Cree Chief Big Bear (Mistahimaskwa) refused to sign Treaty 6 for seven years, seeking better terms, and was one of the last major Indigenous leaders to take treaty — finally doing so in 1883 only after his people faced starvation.[^20][21]

The Destruction of the Bison

Central to the collapse of Plains nations' independence was the systematic destruction of the bison. The northern Plains had supported an estimated 5 to 6 million bison in the early 19th century; by the 1860s, two-thirds were gone. By 1879, bison herds had effectively disappeared from the Saskatchewan territory — before even the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. This collapse was driven by commercial hide hunting, the expansion of the HBC pemmican trade, and in the American context, deliberate military policy to remove the commissary of Plains nations.[^25][26][^27][28]

The consequences for Plains peoples were catastrophic. An Emory University study found that bison-reliant Indigenous societies had enjoyed living standards comparable to or better than their European contemporaries before the collapse — yet within a generation, bison extermination caused economic devastation from which these communities have never fully recovered. Canadian government officials, including Commissioner of Indian Affairs Edgar Dewdney, deliberately withheld and manipulated ration distribution to compel Plains Cree bands under Big Bear, Little Pine, Piapot, and Poundmaker to submit to reserve confinement — a policy historians have described as the weaponization of starvation.[^29][27][^20]

Resistance, Rebellion, and Its Aftermath

The North-West Resistance (1885)

By the early 1880s, a convergence of grievances produced open resistance. The bison were gone; treaty promises were unfulfilled; settlers, railways, and farm fences were replacing the open Plains; and Métis land rights were again under threat as settlement pushed westward into Saskatchewan. In early 1885, Louis Riel — recalled from exile in Montana by Métis and First Nations communities — declared a provisional government at Batoche.[^30][31]

Plains Cree leaders Poundmaker (Pitikwahanapiwiyin) and Big Bear allied their bands with the Métis resistance. Notable engagements included the Métis victories at Duck Lake and Fish Creek, and the Cree victory over Canadian militia at the Battle of Cut Knife Hill. The resistance ended with the fall of Batoche in May 1885 after a four-day battle against overwhelming federal forces aided by the newly completed CPR. Riel was hanged for treason. Eight Indigenous men were hanged in Canada's largest mass execution. Several chiefs, including Poundmaker and Big Bear, were imprisoned.[^32][33]

The Pass System (1885–1941)

In the immediate aftermath of the resistance, the Canadian government implemented the pass system — a regime of internal passports requiring any First Nations person to obtain written permission from an Indian agent before leaving their reserve. Though it had no basis in law and directly contradicted treaty promises, the system was enforced for nearly 60 years, until approximately 1941. A parallel permit system required Indigenous peoples to obtain government authorization to sell agricultural produce — effectively preventing economic independence on the reserves. The pass system applied to all First Nations people, including veterans of the First and Second World Wars.[^34][35][^36]

The Indian Act and Assimilation Machinery

Indian Act (1876)

Passed on April 12, 1876, the Indian Act remains — after 150 years and multiple amendments — the primary legal instrument governing Canada's relationship with registered First Nations. The Act gave the federal government sweeping control over reserve governance, land use, healthcare, education, band membership, and the very definition of who counted as "Indian". It implemented compulsory enfranchisement — the loss of Indian status through various means, including women marrying non-status men — as a mechanism of demographic assimilation.[^37][38][^39][40]

The Act banned Indigenous cultural practices: the potlatch on the Northwest Coast, the Sun Dance on the Plains, and other ceremonies were criminalized; participants faced imprisonment and the confiscation of regalia. It made it illegal for Indigenous people to hire lawyers to pursue land claims, effectively blocking legal resistance to dispossession. One government document bluntly described its philosophy: "Our Indian legislation generally rests on the principle that the aborigines are to be kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the State".[^41]

Residential Schools

Concurrent with the Indian Act, the residential school system operationalized cultural genocide on a mass scale. The first residential schools in New France date to the 17th century; by the late 19th century, the system was formally expanded across Canada. At least 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children passed through the system. Schools were funded by the federal government and administered by Christian churches, primarily Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian denominations.[^42][43][^44]

Children were forcibly removed from their families, forbidden from speaking their languages or practicing their cultures, and subjected to severe physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. The system's logic was explicitly articulated by its architects: children must be separated from Indigenous communities to break the intergenerational transmission of culture. For Plains and Woodland communities, where oral tradition, land-based knowledge, ceremony, and kinship networks were inseparable from identity, this represented a direct assault on the foundations of society. The last residential school in Canada closed in Saskatchewan in 1996.[^45][43]

Land Surrenders After Treaty

Even the reserved lands promised under treaties were systematically eroded. Between 1896 and 1911 alone, over 100 surrenders of treaty reserve land were obtained by the Crown across the Prairie region — representing 21% of all lands reserved to Prairie First Nations in just fifteen years. These surrenders frequently involved coercion, deception, or simple failure to follow even the Crown's own legal requirements.[^46]

Key Colonial Mechanisms: A Comparative View

Mechanism	Period	Primary Impact	Nations Affected
Epidemic disease	1600s–1870s	Population collapse (up to 90%)	All Plains & Woodland nations[14][4]
Fur trade dependency	1600s–1870s	Economic restructuring, territorial shifts	Woodland Cree, Ojibwe, Métis[7][9]
Numbered Treaties	1871–1921	Land cession / reserve confinement	All Prairie and Woodland nations[20][21]
Bison extermination	~1860–1879	Starvation, submission to reserve system	Plains Cree, Blackfoot, Assiniboine[25][27]
Indian Act (1876)	1876–present	Legal control of identity, governance, culture	All registered First Nations[37][40]
Pass & Permit systems	1885–1941	Physical confinement to reserves	Prairie First Nations[34][36]
Residential schools	1880s–1996	Intergenerational cultural disruption	First Nations, Inuit, Métis[42][43]
Reserve land surrenders	1896–1930s	Loss of 21%+ of reserved lands	Prairie First Nations[^46]

Differentiated Experiences: Plains vs. Woodland Nations

While all Indigenous nations experienced colonial dispossession, the timing and mechanisms differed between Plains and Woodland peoples.

Plains nations (Blackfoot, Plains Cree, Assiniboine, Saulteaux) were brought into the colonial orbit later but with extreme speed and violence. Their political independence rested on the bison; once the herds collapsed in the 1870s, starvation was immediate and treaty-signing became effectively coerced. The 1885 Resistance and its violent suppression ushered in the pass system and a particularly harsh reserve regime on the Prairies.[^35][29][^20][34]

Woodland nations (Woodland Cree, northern Ojibwe, Swampy Cree) entered the colonial relationship earlier through the fur trade and in many cases retained more cultural and geographic flexibility through the 19th century, given the less economically desirable nature of the boreal forest for agricultural settlement. However, they faced the same Indian Act, residential school system, and land erosion policies as their southern counterparts, and northern treaty-making — Treaties 8 through 11 — extended colonial control into Subarctic territories well into the 20th century.[^7][18][^20]

Resilience, Resistance, and Reconciliation

Indigenous resistance did not end at Batoche. Through the colonial period, leaders persistently petitioned the government for treaty fulfilment, resisted residential school placement of their children, maintained ceremonies underground, and transmitted knowledge and language across generations despite enormous obstacles. Pan-Indigenous political organizations emerged through the 20th century, challenging the Indian Act and land policies through courts and legislatures.[^21][45]

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which concluded its work in 2015, documented the residential school system as a form of "cultural genocide" — the stated goal being "to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities". Its 94 Calls to Action addressed child welfare, education, language, justice, and governance, including the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. As of 2026, more than 85% of the 76 calls requiring sole or shared federal leadership have been completed or are well underway, though significant gaps remain.[^47][48]

Bison restoration projects led by Indigenous nations — including the Blackfoot and Plains Cree — are reintroducing bison to traditional territories as a form of ecological and cultural decolonization. Land claim negotiations, self-government agreements, and language revitalization programs represent ongoing efforts to rebuild what colonialism sought to destroy.[^28]

Conclusion

The colonial history of Plains and Woodland Indigenous peoples was not a single event but a layered, century-long process: epidemic disease shattered populations; the fur trade created new dependencies even as it offered agency; treaty-making dispossessed nations of land under false premises; the deliberate destruction of the bison enforced submission; and the Indian Act, residential schools, pass systems, and land surrenders worked in concert to dismantle the social, cultural, and political foundations of Indigenous life. That these nations endure — culturally, politically, and spiritually — stands as testimony to the depth and resilience of their traditions, and the inadequacy of any colonial framework to fully contain them.

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