An Exploration of the Selkirk Treaty by Nathan Hasselstrom Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree in History University of Ottawa © Nathan Hasselstrom, Ottawa, Canada, 2019 !ii Abstract In 1817, the fifth Earl of Selkirk and certain Saulteaux chiefs negotiated the Selkirk Treaty to secure the existence of a fragile Euro-Canadian settlement near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Selkirk died soon after, and his agents and successors disputed the content of the treaty with the Indigenous negotiating parties. The historiography of the Selkirk Treaty has not reached a consensus on these disputes, in part due to the number of ostensibly contradictory sources it draws upon. This thesis argues that these disputes can be best answered, and these ostensibly contradictory sources best reconciled, by situating them and the Selkirk Treaty within the context of the Indigenous and Imperial land frameworks that operated in Red River in 1817. This thesis first identifies unresolved questions in the historiography of the Selkirk Treaty. Using primary sources cited in the historiography, it then outlines the ideas acting within the Indigenous and Imperial land frameworks operative over Red River. It argues these ideas and frameworks remained intact during the negotiation of the Selkirk Treaty. On the basis of these frameworks, this thesis further argues that neither Lord Selkirk nor the Saulteaux negotiators intended the Selkirk Treaty to consist of a permanent alienation of Indigenous land. However, after Selkirk’s death, his agents and successors came to trust the Indenture of the Selkirk Treaty, a written and signed record of the treaty, as the only trustworthy record of the agreement. Selkirk’s agents and successors then read the Indenture as a permanent alienation of land, but this thesis argues that, on the basis of the borders specified in the Indenture, that document alone is inadequate to interpret the Selkirk Treaty. The primary purpose of this thesis is to provide a point of departure for future research into the Selkirk Treaty. At the same time, it is intended as a corrective against assuming the ideas of either Indigenous or Euro-Canadian actors about land rights in colonization zones. It is also meant to act as a caution against relying any more heavily on the Indenture of the Selkirk Treaty than scholars do on the written records of other treaties. It is further hoped that this thesis contributes to a better understanding of Red River’s Métis population in these early years by situating them within the framework of the broader Iron Alliance. !iii Acknowledgements I want to thank Damien-Claude Bélanger for encouraging me to apply to a graduate program and helping me to navigate its early stages; my father for telling me he was pleased with my decision, and later for telling me I should probably see it through; Bryan King for convincing me the decision was ethically defensible; Meredith Terretta for trying to impress upon me the seriousness of the endeavour; Brenda Macdougall and Nicole St-Onge for their charity and endurance; and Daniel Rück for his supervision, different perspectives, encouragement, and sufferance as I meandered through various unworkable projects towards this one. I also want to thank the library system at the University of Ottawa, both for its many microfilmed resources squirrelled away in the library annex and also for its handling of interlibrary loans. The ability to access microfilmed resources from the Provincial Archives of Manitoba and Hudson’s Bay Company Archives without having to brave a trip to Winnipeg was appreciated. I am also grateful for the steady digitization being carried out by various archival institutions, most especially to the kindly souls who made Library and Archives Canada’s microfilmed reels of the Selkirk Papers available on canadiana.org. Another highlight has been the simple and user-friendly nature of the interface the University of Manitoba Libraries used to make freely available digitized versions of early newspapers, allowing me to avoid the endless frustrations experienced in an earlier incarnation of this project. !iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv List of Figures v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Identifying Areas of Dispute 17 Chapter 2: Land Frameworks over Red River 40 Chapter 3: Preserving a Land Framework, 1812-1817 61 Chapter 4: Negotiating the Selkirk Treaty 80 Chapter 5: Towards a Permanent Alienation of Land and Reliance on the Indenture 102 Chapter 6: The Boundaries of the Selkirk Treaty and Inadequacy of the Indenture 128 Conclusion 148 Appendices 161 Appendix 1: Compilation of Names and Spellings of Various Individuals 161 Appendix 2: List of Selkirk Treaty Witness Statements 163 Appendix 3: Concerning Le Sonnant and the Indenture of the Selkirk Treaty 165 Appendix 4: Speculation Regarding Selkirk Treaty Time Limits 168 Bibliography 170 !v List of Figures Figure 1: Rupert’s Land 1 Figure 2: Assiniboia or the Selkirk Grant 2 Figure 3: “Selkirk Treaty—Indian Chart of Red River—IT 258” 5 Figure 4: Musk Rat Creek 6 Figure 5: The Selkirk Treaty and Map (Modified extract) 9 Figure 6: The Forks (July 31st, 1848) 137 Figure 7: Detail from George Taylor survey map, 1838 138 Figure 8: Northern Red River, 1858 139 !1 Introduction In 1670, the fur-trading Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) received a Royal Charter granting it a trading monopoly, jurisdictional authority, and fee simple property ownership over Rupert’s Land. Rupert’s Land was defined, with some caveats, as all the lands along the waterways “that lye within the entrance of the Streightes commonly called Hudsons Streightes.” By the early nineteenth century, the HBC controversially interpreted this to mean the entire Hudson’s Bay drainage basin [Figure 1], conveniently rendering illegal the long-standing activities of its fur trade rivals based out of Canada, in particular the North-West Company (NWC).1 Thomas Douglas, the Fifth Earl of Selkirk and a keen proponent of North American colonization, agreed. He began buying stock Figure 1: Rupert’s Land Rough approximation of Rupert’s Land. Traced upon detail of “North American Environmental in the HBC in 1809, and soon after Atlas—Lakes and Rivers, 2009.” Commission for Environmental Cooperation. 2009. Accessed spearheaded a project to found an agricultural March 31st, 2019. http://www.cec.org/tools-and- resources/map-files/lakes-and- rivers-2009.Cooperation. colony along the Red River. The HBC had only recently begun extending its commercial presence into the area, but such a colony would directly affirm the HBC’s proprietary pretensions. It would also disrupt the NWC’s supply chain and export route to Montreal and the St. Lawrence.2 1 “Charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670,” in Charters, Statutes, Orders in Council, Relation to the Hudson’s Bay Company (London: Hudson’s Bay Company, 1960), 3-4. For a defence of the HBC position on the extent of Rupert’s Land, see Samuel Gale, Notices on the Claims of the Hudson’s Bay Company: to Which is Added, a Copy of Their Royal Charter (London, John Murray, 1819); compare with Kent McNeil, Native Rights and the Boundaries of Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Native Law Centre, 1982). 2 J. M. Bumsted, Lord Selkirk: A Life (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2008), 187, 192-193 (compare with John Perry Pritchett, The Red River Valley, 1811-1849: A Regional Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), 35-36); W. L. Morton, Manitoba: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 44-46. !2 For this purpose, in 1811 the HBC formally granted Lord Selkirk around 120,000 square miles of property in the Lake Winnipeg basin. The expanse became known as Assiniboia or the Selkirk Grant [Figure 2]. The entails in Selkirk’s deed of Figure 2: Assiniboia or the Selkirk Grant conveyance meant that he had not been granted fee Modified detail of “Map of Assiniboia and the Red River Settlement,” Chester Martin, simple property ownership.3 This then was the Lord Selkirk’s Work in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1916), 227. framework for the first attempt by the HBC to realize a proprietary colony under its charter authority. Selkirk and the HBC soon appointed Miles Macdonell, a retired soldier from the Canadas, as the Governor of Assiniboia. Macdonell proceeded to Red River, with instructions to disguise from the Indigenous population the fact that he was founding a permanent settlement. However, when the first settlers reached the Red River in 1812, the Saulteaux bands they met were favourable to the plan. Both they and the Métis in the area provided critical aid to these settlers through the harsh early winters.4 Then in January 1814, Macdonell, citing charter authority and settlers’ food security, issued the Pemmican Proclamation, banning the export of provisions from Assiniboia. In July, 3 “Grant of the District of Assiniboia by the Hudson’s Bay Company to Lord Selkirk,” in E. H. Oliver, The Canadian North-West, Its Early Development and Legislative Records: Minutes of the Councils of the Red River Colony and the Northern Department of Rupert’s Land, vol. 1, (Publications of the Canadian Archives No. 9 (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1914), 154-168. 4 Instructions from Lord Selkirk to Miles McDonnell, 1811, SP 177; September 19th, 1812, in Miles McDonnell No 2—Journal from 7th July 1812 to 22nd April 1813, SP 16754; the NWC also helped the first settlers get through the winter (Donald Gunn and Charles Tuttle. History of Manitoba from the Earliest Settlement to 1835 (Ottawa: Maclean, Roger & Co, 1880, 76-78). A note on terminology: ‘Saulteaux’ is the name the French gave to the Anishnaabe or Ojibwa people they had encountered living near Sault Ste.