An Environmental History of Canada

Laurel Sefton MacDowell

An Environmental History of Canada

Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Contents

Acknowledgments / 1x Introduction / 1

Part 1: Aboriginal Peoples and Settlers

1 Encountering a New Land / 11 2 Settling the Land and Transforming the “Wilderness” / 40

Part 2: Industrialism, Reform, and Infrastructure

3 Early Cities and Urban Reform / 75 4 The Conservation ovementM / 96 5 Mining Resources / 120 6 Cars, Consumerism, and Suburbs / 140

Part 3: Harnessing Nature, Harming Nature

7 Changing Energy Regimes / 163 8 Water / 188 9 The Contested World of oodF and Agriculture / 215

Part 4: The Environmental Era

10 The Environmental Movement and Public Policy / 243 11 Parks and Wildlife / 268 12 Coastal Fisheries / 286 13 The North and Climate Change / 305 Conclusion / 326 Index / 331 Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Acknowledgments

This book began in the early 1990s, when I Jen MacDowell, who searched for and cop- started to rethink Canadian history from an ied many articles, saving me a lot of time. environmental perspective. I developed an I particularly want to thank Randy undergraduate course in Canadian environ- Schmidt, senior editor at UBC Press, for mental history and a graduate course in his patience and support through a lengthy North American environmental history, and review and revision process. More recently, I organized a conference on the new field of I worked with copy editor Lesley Erickson, environmental history. I then began to write production editor Holly Keller, and cartog- this book. rapher Eric Lein­berger to bring the book to Many people have influenced and press. It has been a large task, but I appreci- as­sisted me. A special thanks to Elizabeth ate their excellent work. Jewett for help with the photos. Ben Bradley, I am dedicating this book to Carl Berger Colin Coates, Harriet Friedmann, Richard – my friend, teacher, colleague, and husband. Hoffman, George Warecki, Alexander Carl studied the natural world long before Murray, and the Toronto Environmental there was a field of environmental history. History group read and commented on Together, we have bird-watched, gardened, earlier versions of several chapters. Thanks and walked in forests, fields, and deserts. to Richard White for his advice about the These experiences have influenced me and photos and maps. Thanks to my daughter, inform this history.

Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press An Environmental History of Canada

Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Introduction

North Americans have not yet learned the difference between yield and loot. – carl sauer, geographer, “theme of plant and animal destruction in economic history,” 1938

What is environmental history? More history of global environmental degradation specifically, what is Canadian environmental and the impact of capitalism and imperial- history? History, in general, is the study of ism on world ecologies.” In North America, the human past on the planet. But there are influenced in large part by the modern en- many branches of historical inquiry. Pol­itical vironmental movement, historians began to historians analyze policies and the actions examine the past to determine how and why of leaders; economic historians examine the current state of environmental despolia- economic phenomena and institutions and tion had occurred. To answer these ques- how they have affected history; and so- tions, they had to rethink US and Canadian cial historians use categories such as class, history. gender, race, and ethnicity to understand Environmental history began as an off- the lives of different groups of people. For shoot of intellectual history and is associ­ environmental historians, nature is an agent ated with the publication of Samuel Hays’ in human development and social change. Con­serv­ation and the Gospel of Efficiency These historians focus on the interdependent (1959) and Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and relationship between people and the natural the Amer­ican Mind (1967). Historians of the world, human beings and their environment, American West such as Walter Prescott Webb and human society and the planet. and James Malin recognized the physical Environmental history is a relatively new environment’s effects on society. Donald field that emerged in the 1970s and took on Worster’s Nature’s Economy (1994), an intel- steam in the 1980s; by 2000 historians such lectual history of thinkers’ ideas about nature as John McNeill were calling attention to and ecology, led to his work on the effect of the enormous pressure that humans were human action on the environment in Dust placing on the planet. Historian Richard Bowl (2004), a book about the American Grove (2007, 76) observes that scholars were West in the 1930s. In Rivers of Empire (1992), “increasingly concernedSample to look back Material at the Worster © traced 2012 the manipulation UBC Press of rivers to 2 introduction

irrigate western lands, pro­duce wealth, and on the Columbian exchange – the massive lay the basis of modern western American exchange of ideas, diseases, agricultural society. Historians interested in the roots of goods, and slave labour between the eastern modern environmentalism, such as Robert and western hemispheres after 1492 – looked Gottlieb and Adam Rome, examined early at the theme of indigenous-newcomer con- “pollution fighters” in the 1960s, the evolv­ tact not from the perspective of imperialism ing envi­ronmental movement, and issues or colonialism but through a lens focused of environmental justice that related the on the environmental consequences of these variables of class, gender, and ethnicity to exchanges. Stephen J. Pyne, in Fire in environmental history. Historian Carolyn America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Merchant, biographer Linda Lear, and others Rural Fire (1982), analyzed the relationship wrote women into environmental history. between culture and nature through the use Shepard Krech III and Richard White ex­ of fire, whereas Thomas Dunlap, in Nature amined indigenous people’s attitudes to and the English Diaspora (1999), examined nature in contrast to those of Europeans. English settlers’ ideas about nature and later By the 1980s, environmental history was a conceptions of conservation and ecology. vibrant interdisciplinary field. Historians in Other environmental historians explored the Canada and the United States experimented relationship between the economy and the by borrowing theories and methods from environment and the economy’s effect on anthropology, archaeology, historical geog- environmental policy and politics. Finally, raphy, Aboriginal studies, and various scien- Martin Melosi and others insisted that tific fields. Some drew on science methods to environmental history should include the “read” ecological footprints on the land – urban environment, and they broadened such as scorch marks in rocks, tree rings, or both environmental history and urban his- bones from excavation sites – to reinterpret tory by examining consumer culture and the past. Others examined how perceptions urban waste and the changing infrastructure of the wilderness or the environment had of cities and their spatial effect on local helped to shape, or construct, nature and the communities. landscape. Still others studied the influence Canadian environmental history was of war and government policy on the perhaps sparked by Ramsay Cook’s comment environment. in 1990 that early Canadian historians such The fruit of these lines of inquiry proved as W.L. Morton and Arthur Lower had been original and provocative. For example, sensitive to the environment but had not William Cronon’s classic study, Changes studied it explicitly as a theme (Cook 1990). in the Land (1983), about colonial New Harold Innis, a political economist and England, recounted how settlers’ use of the pioneer in communications studies, for land had differed from that of indigenous example, had developed the staples thesis peoples, whom settlers marginalized as they to explain the history of Canadian resource transformed the environment. Ecological development and exploitation, but he did Imperialism (1986), Alfred Crosby’s work not explore the effect of this development Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press introduction 3

on the environment. Donald Creighton’s Environmental History held its first meeting Laurentian hypothesis (that Canadian eco- in Canada, in Victoria, British Columbia. nomic and national development derived These early developments led to financial from the gradual exploitation of key staples support from universities and the first such as fur, timber, and wheat) and J.M.S. appointments in environmental history. The Careless’s metropolitan-hinterland thesis Social Sciences and Humanities Research (that large urban communities dominate Council, for instance, began to fund the surrounding territory through economic Network in Canadian History and the means) likewise overlooked the effects of Environment (NICHE). This explosion of historical change on the Canadian land­scape. interest in Canadian environmental history Carl Berger’s intellectual history Science, God was reflected in scholarly journals. BC Studies and Nature in Victorian Canada; Suzanne published an entire issue on the environment Zeller’s Land of Promise, Promised Land: in 2004, and in 2007 the American journal The Culture of Victorian Science in Canada, Environmental History devoted an issue to which links landscape to science and tech- Canada. nology; and William Waiser’s biography of Environmental historians from around botanist John Macoun, The Field Naturalist, the world met in Denmark in 2009 for are examples of studies that explore the the First Global Environmental History theme of nature but are not en­vironmental Conference. Throughout the decade, ecology histories. Likewise, Canadian historical – the branch of biology that deals with how geographers, influenced by R. Cole Harris, organisms relate to one another and to their Conrad Heidenreich, and others, concen- environments – emerged as a lens through trated on tracing Canada’s geographical which environmental historians could evolution over time, as exemplified by the rethink the past. They began to use it as three-volume Historical Atlas of Canada. a metaphor and as a model to distinguish Environmental historian Graeme Wynn their approach from historical geography. suggests that the discipline’s prominence Canadian environmental historians quick- perhaps delayed the inception of environ- ly differentiated themselves from their US mental history in Canada by drawing pro- counterparts. Whereas American environ- spective scholars away from history. mental history has been shaped by the work In the 1990s, however, US envirometal of Cronon, Webb, and Malin on the western history began to influence Canadian histor- frontier and by historical studies on con- ians. Several conferences held in Canada servation, Canadian environmental history showcased existing work by US and Can­ has been influenced by Innis’s staple thesis, adian environmental historians and explored Creighton’s Laurentian hypothesis, and new directions for research. At McGill Careless’s metropolitan-hinterland thesis. University in Montreal, the Arpents Environ­ Armed with a different national history mental History Group started a network and historiographical tradition, Canadian for environmental historians in 2003. The environmental historians reassessed these following year, the American Society for early theories of and approaches to the past, Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 4 introduction

offered new explanatory frameworks, and America. It is true that Canadians are “the focused on Canada’s history as a northern other North Americans.” But even though nation. Canada’s economic and cultural history has The growing complexity of environmental become more intertwined with that of the issues at the end of the twentieth century, United States, particularly in the second half including environmental health and climate of the twentieth century, Canada has a differ- change, has opened historians’ eyes to new ent climate, distinctive geographical features subjects and issues, and North American such as the Canadian Shield, its own history, historians took note when European histor- a parliamentary system of government and ians urged them to apply more social theory politics, and unique elements such as Crown to environmental history. These concerns lands that have affected the exploitation of are reflected in a range of new studies and resources. More importantly, Canada is an approaches: from revisionist narratives of immense country that has natural resources Canadian resources development that take such as forests, fish, and water and diverse into account environmental policy, to studies ecosystems that are increasingly essential to of the importance of provincial and national the world. parks, to the ideas and backgrounds of lead- This book explores how Canada’s land- ers in environmental campaigns. The increas- scape changed over thousands of years. When ing prominence of global environmental glaciers retreated, ending the Ice Age, they issues suggests that Canadian environmental left behind a geography that influenced history will only become more important as Canada and its history profoundly. This the twenty-first century progresses. text re-examines well-known subjects in In a rapidly globalizing world, environ­ Canadian history – Aboriginal peoples and mental historians are also examining develop­ their first contacts with Europeans, the ments within a comparative or transnational fur trade, settling the land, the creation perspective. This research suggests that of a transportation infrastructure, and the environmental history may work best on growth of cities – in ways that emphasize a regional or global scale rather than on a the interaction between people and their national one. In their introduction to Ecology environment. Today, sustainable develop­ment and Empire: Environmental History of Settler is a buzzword for policy makers, but it did Societies, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin not play a large part in Canadian history. argue (1997, 12) that national histories are Although Aboriginal people lived lives linked limited in that they “need continually to intimately to the environment – to plants, fragment or enlarge the national perspec- animals, and landscapes – they were relegat- tive and to scrutinize and reflect upon the ed to reserves after the arrival of European intersections of nature and nation.” This settlers, who sought to conquer the land, not book acknowledges this limitation but also only for survival but also for profit. In the recognizes that all Canadians, from students nineteenth century, voters supported polit- to concerned citizens, need an environ- icians and businesses intent on making the mental history of the northern half of North nation prosperous and powerful through the Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press introduction 5

development of agriculture, industry, and of Alaska. These activists, the founders of resources. Sustained economic growth, not Greenpeace, helped to foster “a new environ- sustainable development, has been the driv- mental way of thinking,” one that favours ing force in Canadian history. The growth of human stewardship rather than domination consumerism in the late twentieth century of nature (McNeill 2000, 337). Annual cele- has only further desensitized Canadians to brations such as Earth Day and growing the natural world, even though we continue awareness of climate change have trans- to depend upon it for our survival. formed environmentalism into a mainstream Sustained economic growth has been a movement. The perplexing issue of how to driving force in history, yet in the past, as repair damage to what we now recognize is in the present, some people questioned a fragile planet and forestall a turbulent and whether Canada’s bountiful environment threatening future is a growing concern. was as inexhaustible as the development Debates about the Kyoto Accord and ethos suggested. In the late nineteenth cen- climate change suggest, however, that the tury, Canadian intellectuals, scientists, natur- Canadian government’s response to modern alists, and civil servants were in the vanguard environmental issues and the enforcement of the conservation movement. Their belief of regulations continue to be lax. Part of the that exploitation must be balanced by problem is our very disconnection from conservation led Canada to adopt early nature and our over-reliance on and confi- legislation to regulate hunters and resource dence in technology as a solution to prob- extractors and to preserve forests, watersheds, lems. As this book shows, hubris is a recurring and wildlife. Policy makers, however, were theme in Canadian history. The collapse of motivated as much by commercial gain as the Newfoundland cod fishery in 1992 is they were by a concern for the environment. only the most recent example. Quick fixes National parks not only protected nature, designed to sustain economic growth rather they also became sites for multiple activities, than preserve nature are no solution. But including logging, tourism, and recreation, prosperity, enjoyed far from the crushing by the late twentieth century. poverty of developing countries, makes it The 1960s and early 1970s witnessed difficult for Canadians to appreciate the renewed protests against environmental urgent need to create a sustainable society. degradation. In 1962, for instance, Rachel The message of conservation articulated Carson, an American writer, published Silent early in the twentieth century remains Spring to raise an alarm about the effects of unfulfilled. DDT and other chemical pollutants. She Learning new ways to live that leave a found a massive audience of readers in both lighter human imprint on the environment, the United States and Canada. A decade developing new energy sources, and reusing later, a small group of activists set sail from resources rather than wasting them are chal- Vancouver, British Columbia, aboard the lenges that Canadians and people around the Phyllis Cormack to draw attention to US world must meet in the twenty-first century. underground nuclear testing off the coast Because the commercial drive remains Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 6 introduction

strong, living sustainably will require re- played out throughout Canadian history, not education. This environmental history of to condemn, but so we can begin to develop Canada brings to light the grave conse- strategies to create a liveable, sustainable quences of the development ethos as it environment in the future.

Works Cited Evenden, Matthew D. 2004. Fish versus Power: An Environ­ Cook, Ramsay. 1990. “‘Cabbages Not Kings’: Towards an Eco­ mental History of the Fraser River. New York: Cambridge logical Interpretation of Early Canadian History.” Journal of University Press. Canadian Studies 25, 4: 5-16. Forkey, Neil S. 2003. Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Griffiths, Tom, and Libby Robin, eds. 1997. Ecology and Empire: Environment, Society and Culture in the Trent Valley. Calgary: Environmental History of Settler Societies. Edin­burgh: Keele University of Calgary Press. University Press. Hodgins, Bruce W., Jamie Benidickson, and Peter Gillis. 1982. Grove, Richard. 2007. “The Great El Nino of 1789-93 and Its “Ontario and Quebec Experiments in Forest Reserves, 1883- Global Consequences.” Medieval History Journal 10, 1 and 2: 1930.” Journal of Forest History 26, 1: 20-33. 75-98. Killan, Gerald. 1993. Protected Places: A History of Ontario’s McNeill, John R. 2000. Something New under the Sun: An Provincial Parks System. Toronto: Dundurn Press. Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New Loo, Tina. 2006. States of Nature: Conserving Canada’s Wilder­ York: W.W. Norton. ness in the Twentieth Century. Vancouver: UBC Press. Sauer, Carl O. 1938. “Theme of Plant and Animal Destruction MacEachern, Alan. 2001. Natural Selections: National Parks in in Economic History.” In Land and Life, edited by John Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970. Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Leighly, 145-54. Berkeley: University of California Press. Queen’s University Press, 2001. Morse, Kathryn. 2003. The Nature of Gold: An Environmental For Further Reading History of the Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle: University of Dunlap, Thomas. 1999. Nature and the English Diaspora: Washington Press. Environ­ment and History in the United States, Canada, Nelles, H.V. 1974. The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines and Australia, and New Zealand. New York: Cambridge Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941. Toronto: University Press. Macmillan of Canada. Hays, Samuel. 1959. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: Piper, Liza, and John Sandlos. 2007. “A Broken Frontier: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Cam­bridge: Ecological Imperialism in the Canadian North.” Environ­ Harvard University Press. mental History 12, 4: 759-95. Malin, James. 1956. The Grasslands of North America: Sandwell, R.W. 2009. “History as Experiment: Micro­history Prolegomena to Its History. Lawrence, KS: J.C. Malin. and Environmental History.” In Method and Meaning Nash, Roderick. 1967. Wilderness and the American Mind. New in Canadian Environmental History, edited by Alan Haven, CT: Yale University Press. MacEachern and William J. Turkel, 124-38. Toronto: Webb, Walter Prescott. 1931. The Great Plains. Waltham, MA: Nelson Education. Ginn and Company. Stelter, Gilbert A., and Allan F.J. Artibise, eds. 1984. The Can­ adian City: Essays in Urban and Social History. Ottawa: Canadian Environmental History Carleton University Press. Campbell, Claire Elizabeth. 2005. Shaped by the West Wind: Stuart, Richard. 1994. “‘History Is Concerned with More Nature and History in Georgian Bay. Vancouver: UBC Than Ecology, But It Is Concerned with Ecology Too’: Press. Environmental History in Parks Canada.” Paper presented Colpitts, George. 2002. Game in the Garden: A Human History at the Canadian Historical Association annual meeting, of Wildlife in Western Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press. Win­nipeg, Manitoba, June. Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press introduction 7

Warecki, George. 2000. Protecting Ontario’s Wilderness: A –. 2003. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural History of Changing Ideas and Preservation Politics, 1927-1973. Consequences of 1492. Santa Barbara: Praeger. New York: Peter Lang. Gottlieb, Robert. 2005. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation Wynn, Graeme. 2004. ‘“Shall We Linger Along Ambition­less?’ of the American Environmental Movement. New York: Island Environmental Perspectives on British Columbia.” BC Press. Studies 142-43: 5-67. Hurley, A., ed. 1997. Common Fields: An Environmental History –. 2007. Canada and Arctic North America: An Environmental of St. Louis. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society. History. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Krech, Shepard, III. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W.W. Norton. International and Transnational Perspectives Lear, Linda. 1997. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Evans, Sterling. 2006. Borderlands of the American and Can­ Henry Holt and Company. adian Wests: Essays on the Regional History of the 49th Parallel. Melosi, Martin. 2001. Effluent America: Cities, Industry, Energy, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. and the Environment. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Griffiths, Tom, and Libby Robin, eds. 1997. Ecology and Empire: Press. Environmental History of Settler Societies. Edin­burgh: Keele Merchant, Carolyn. 1990. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology University Press. and the Scientific Revolution.San Francisco: Harper. Grove, Richard. 2007. “The Great El Nino of 1789-93 and Its Opie, John. 1998. Nature’s Nation: An Environmental History of Global Consequences.” Medieval History Journal 10, 1 and 2: the United States. New York: Harcourt Brace College 75-98. Publishers. McNeill, John R. 2000. Something New under the Sun: An Pyne, Stephen J. 1982. Fire in America: A Cultural History Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New of Wildland and Rural Fire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton York: W.W. Norton. University Press. Sorlin, Sverker, and Paul Warde. 2007. “The Problem of Envi­ Rome, Adam. 2003. “‘Give Earth a Chance’: The Environ­ ronmental History: A Rereading of the Field.” Environ­ mental Movement and the Sixties.” Journal of American mental History 12, 1: 107-30. History 90, 2: 525-54. Weart, Spencer R. 2008. The Discovery of Global Warming. White, Richard. 1985. “American Environmental History: The Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Development of a New Historical Field.” Pacific Historical White, Richard. 1999. “The Nationalization of Nature.” Journal Review 54, 3: 297-335. of American History 86, 3: 976-86. Worster, Donald. 1992. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West. New York: Oxford University US Environmental History Press. Cronon, William. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians, Col­onists –. 1994. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crosby, Alfred. 1986. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological –. 2004. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. New York: Cambridge Oxford University Press. University Press.

Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press part 1 Aboriginal Peoples and Settlers

Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 1 Encountering a New Land

Fossil records suggest that in the past 500 million years, there have been five waves of extinction when large numbers of species died out ... most recently, when the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago. Preeminent scientists believe that humans are currently causing the sixth great extinction in the history of life on Earth. – david r. boyd, environmental lawyer, unnatural law, 2003

The land we now know as Canada evolved environment and the way in which people – over millions of years, and humans have both Aboriginal and European – perceived it. inhabited it for only a fraction of that time. During ice ages, vast sheets of ice and snow The Land before People covered much of the northern hemisphere. A unique combination of natural forces In the not-so-distant past, North America came together to create land bridges that was a different place than it is today. But drew humans to the continent. Climate then, as now, a combination of geography, change influenced the movement and social ecology, geology, climate change, and acci- development of peoples throughout North dent shaped the continent’s turbulent history. and South America. Aboriginal peoples, During the Mesozoic era (245-65 million in turn, developed patterns of subsistence years ago), the environment evolved in the living that were finely adapted to local en- absence of humans, and dinosaurs roamed a vironments and natural resources such as land that we would not recognize today. The buffalo, elk, deer, and fish. A thousand years Rocky Mountains did not yet exist, a huge ago, European explorers began to encounter seaway divided the continent in half, and the the so-called New World for the first time. climate was warm and lush. Small shrubs Over the next eight hundred years, news of grew where today we find towering pines, the region’s riches spread slowly through- and magnolia, Asian gingko, and palm trees out Europe. Speculators, in the form of dotted Alberta’s Badlands. fishermen, explorers, and fur traders, soon The Mesozoic era came to an end around followed. This chapter explores how these 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit long-term developments transformed the what is today known as the Yucatan Peninsula.­ Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press GLOBAL WARMING IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In the distant past, as in the Little Climatic Optimum), which Stewart Callendar (in 1938)  ongoing change in the concen- present, the smallest shift in stretched from 900 to 1300 CE, have warned that increased tration of carbon dioxide in the ocean currents, the earths tilt, and the Little Ice Age (1300- carbon dioxide emissions would atmosphere as measured at the movement of the earths 1870), which was characterized cause temperatures to rise. Mauna Loa Observatory, shows crust, or gases in the atmos- by wetter, cooler temperatures. Today, although we are due for that the global carbon dioxide phere could cause massive Over the past two centuries, a another cooling period, green- level was 315 parts per million climate change. Climatologists number of scientists  Joseph house gases are instead heating (ppm) in 1958, 365 ppm in 1997, have identified what they call Fourier (in 1824), Svante up the planet. The Keeling and 392 ppm in 2011. the Medieval Warm Period (or Arrhenius (in 1894), and Guy Curve, a graph that shows

Hot rock shot into the atmosphere and start- distribution of flora and fauna, resources ed huge fires. The resulting smokescreen such as fossil fuels and minerals, and the destroyed about 80 percent of all species in movement of animals. Sixty million years North America. Most of what remained ago, the movement of the earth’s crust also was rock and clay, but tiny fern spores – joined the two North American continental “the species that won back the continent” – halves together. Continental drift caused survived inside rocks (Flannery 2001) as did North America to join with Greenland and herbs and palms located in remote, sheltered Asia at various times. New animal species areas that acted as refuges for them. The such as huge flightless birds and amphibians Arctic Circle, located far from the blast, was arrived from both the east and the west. The one protective region. There was no ice at mammals included primitive creatures that the pole, and flora – conifers, small flowering resembled hippos, elephants, lions, and plants, and deciduous trees – began to move horses. Fourteen million years after the dino- slowly southward in a gradual greening saurs disappeared, the continent was once process. again repopulated, this time with giant Those animal species that survived mammals that evolved quickly as they hunt- extinction included reptiles such as lizards ed in tropical forests. When temperatures and snakes that burrowed in the land and cooled, biodiversity decreased and species amphibians such as frogs and toads that immigration slowed, despite the presence of could survive for a time on dead matter in land bridges. Cooling caused rainforests to aquatic ecosystems. The water itself protect- give way to deciduous trees, and drier weath- ed these creatures from the asteroid’s intense er promoted the development of grasslands heat. But it was mammals that shaped the in open spaces. Most large mammal species post-asteroid order. Follow­ing the extinction disappeared or migrated to South America, of their most dangerous predators, the dino- which joined North America about 30 million saurs, the mammals that survived grew larger years ago. and more varied, and each new species filled During the Pleistocene epoch (2.9 million­ a vacuum in the new ecosystem. to 12,000 years ago), waves of glaciation Over millions of years, climate change shaped the North American environment. and continental drift – the gradual movement, Scholars continue to debate the causes of formation, or re-formation of the continents the Ice Age, but causative variables included relative to one another described by the changes in ocean currents and the tilt of the theory of plate tectonics – influenced the planet, the movement of the earth’s crust, Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press and volcanic activity. The last intense freeze figure 1.2 Woolly occurred between approximately 35,000 mammoths crossing Beringia into North and 12,000 years ago, a period known as the America. Archaeologists Wisconsin Glacial Episode. What is now discovered the bones of these ancient creatures, Canada was covered in massive ice sheets along with other animals, (the Alaskan, the Laurentide in the northern in Yukon. Courtesy of the SFU Museum of interior, and the Cordilleran along the Pacific Archaeology and Ethnology Coast) that were several kilometres deep. The pressure of advancing and retreating ice pushed enormous rocks hundreds of kilometres, gouged out holes for lakes, built up rock for mountains, and deposited huge quantities of sediment. It transformed the geology, landscape, vegetation, and water systems of North America. figure 1.1 A cold habitat with a During the Pleistocene epoch, a land diverse, productive ecosystem, Beringia bridge about 1,400 kilometres wide formed supported large populations of many species, as well as the humans who across the Bering Strait. Known as Beringia, hunted them. the landmass stretched from present-day Yukon through Alaska to northeast Asia The Arrival of Humans (see Figure 1.1). Beringia was a productive ecosystem that supported a diverse mosaic Humans were late to reach the Americas, of plants, shrubs, and grasslands and large the last continents they inhabited. Ice sheets populations of grazing animals and their blocked movement into North America from predators. The area experienced about twenty Beringia until around 13000 bce (before the freezes and thaws during the Pleistocene era Common Era), when parts of the Northwest that periodically supported the movement of Pacific Coast began to deglaciate. Global animals over the land bridge. Woolly mam- warming encouraged the growth of vegeta- moths (see Figure 1.2), giant ground sloths, tion in what is now Canada. Meltwater muskoxen, camels, broad-fronted moose, channels formed, and lichens, mosses, and and giant beaver crossed into North America small shrubs began to sprout on moraines, pursued by saber-toothed cats, giant short- masses of rocks and sediment carried down faced bears, and wolves. by glaciers. Over time, corridors running Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 14 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

from north to south formed, large glacial this theory, our first ancestors devised long lakes took shape, and boreal forest began Clovis points to slaughter large game effi- to evolve. The process, however, was slow. ciently. Following the mass killing and North America was not fully deglaciated extinction of many mammal species, how­ until around 5000 bce. ever, the Clovis people disappeared within Most scientists believe modern humans three hundred years. The recent discovery of (Homo sapiens), in pursuit of game, began nanodiamonds in the boundary sediment entering North America via the Bering land layer suggests, however, that a medium-sized bridge. Although no human bones have been comet might have hit Earth about 13,000 found in Canada to support this hypothesis, years ago, killing species and temporarily it has been borne out by the 1993 discovery reversing the effects of global warming. of a projectile point in Alaska. Carbon dating of archaeological evidence – fluted points, The Development of Cultural Areas microblades, burins, and flakes – at the Bluefish Caves in northeastern Yukon also The Clovis people were of a single stock, suggests that small hunting groups sporadic- but dental and genetic evidence reveals that ally occupied the area between 25,000 and they became more differentiated as they 12,000 years ago. One theory is that the spread throughout North America and Clovis people, named for their fluted stone developed into three successor peoples – the spear points, crossed Beringia and then Amerinds, the Na-Dené, and the Aleut-Inuit spread southward. As warming temperatures peoples – who used smaller spear points to melted the ice sheets, the sea eventually rose hunt. Early peoples in North America had to cover the Bering land bridge around 11000 to adapt to a dramatically changing environ- bce. It is possible that people continued to ment. Plants disappeared or changed, and come to North America by navigating the new migrant animals filled niches left by narrow channel in boats or rafts and that the extinctions. Bison, elk, moose, and grizzly Bering land bridge was not the only entry bear became fauna distinct to North America point for early people. and the predecessors of contem­porary wild- When the Clovis hunters reached the life. A warmer climate fostered the emer- Great Plains, they encountered vast numbers gence of distinct regions: grasses in the of enormous mammals, which they hunted interior; lichen woodland as far northwest for food and material resources. Their arrival as the Mackenzie River Valley; a vast boreal coincided with the extinction of ancient forest dominated by balsam, jack pine, birch, animals, including the mammoth and masto- and white pine; and a forest of elm, hemlock, don. Although some scholars attribute these maple, and beech in the cool temperate area animals’ extinction to global warming, which of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence region. By disrupted plant and animal ecosystems and 3000 bce, when climate change slowed, dried up watering places, others, such as humans enjoyed a more stable environment.­ geochronologist Paul Martin, liken the Vegetation existed farther north than today, development to a blitzkrieg. According to but as temperatures cooled after 2000 bce, Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 15

the treeline retreated south­ward by as much who relied on relatively simple technology figure 1.3 Indigenous peoples in northern as three hundred kilometres in places. By and dispersed, seasonal, and unpredictable North America spoke 500 bce, environmental conditions were food supplies. Despite a harsh environment, different languages and similar to those experienced by Europeans they were self-sufficient, relied on their in­ occupied approximately these areas at the time when they first arrived in North America in tim­ate knowledge of the land and resources, of European contact. 1000 ce. and developed patterns of subsistence living The changing environment influenced finely adapted to local environments. They the movement of generations of people also developed trade networks within and across northern North America. Their adap- among tribes. tations to new regions – the Arctic, tundra, The peoples of the Pacific Coast and woodlands, and coastal regions – created Interior were primarily fishers who relied on different societies and cultures that shared spears, hooks, nets, and weirs. Some followed certain characteristics (see Figure 1.3). The the salmon along the Fraser, Thompson, and climate remained cool, and the environment upper Columbia Rivers and lived in tempor- could not sustain many people. Although ary huts covered in rush mats. More seden- warmer areas such as the Pacific Interior and tary peoples spent most of the year in pit the St. Lawrence Valley supported farming, houses, made of logs and covered in sod, the majority of people were hunter-gatherers along riverbanks. They feasted, participated Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 16 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

in religious and healing ceremonies, and told herds of buffalo, or bison, which ranged stories featuring characters such as Coyote, across parkland or grasslands, depending the trickster. on the position of vegetative communities, Northwest Coast peoples consumed enor- dominated these hunters’ lives. Plains mous amounts of fish but sustained healthy Indians moved on a seasonal basis in pur­suit fisheries by holding ceremonies to delay of animals, and their dependency on the fishing until the salmon spawned. Such rit- buffalo meant they had to manipulate the uals were a mark of respect for the “salmon environment to enhance its ability to support people,” whom they believed were much like herds. Early peoples followed the buffalo on themselves but lived in houses and villages foot and used dogs and travois to carry sup- under the water. Animals and people were plies and carcasses. The men used projectile essentially the same and could transfer from points on spears, darts (atlatls), and then one type of life form to another. When the bows and arrows to hunt. As they became salmon voluntarily left their villages and more familiar with the buffalos’ migration offered themselves to humans, all groups patterns, they began to lure them into en- celebrated their coming. After the feast, they closures in winter or to stampede them off carefully returned the fish bones to the water cliffs in summer. They used the same kill so the salmon would return once again. sites, such as Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo- Northwest Coast peoples likewise talked to Jump in southern Alberta, for thousands and thanked the animals they hunted and of years. the cedar trees they stripped of bark for The centrality of the buffalo to the lives clothing and baskets. of Plains Indians influenced their cosmology, Although the peoples of the Pacific North­ customs, and spirituality. Plains Indians west were constantly on the move during viewed the buffalo as the provider, as a link their seasonal hunting and fishing activities, between the creator and humans. The Sun they developed more settled and hierarchical Dance, a ritual in preparation for the hunt, communities as their food supplies became revolved around the central image of the more abundant. Because they enjoyed a buffalo. Plains Indians also constructed large moderate climate by Can­adian standards, medicine wheels on hilltops throughout the their art and construction techniques flour- northern Prairies for easier communication ished, and their populations expanded. They with the spirits. Composed of circles with used trees from old-growth forests to make lines of stones radiating out like spokes, large cedar houses, and their regionally dis- medicine wheels were used to attract rain tinctive wooden carvings of ravens, thunder- and buffalo and, possibly, to mark burial birds, and other powerful creatures reflected sites. During hunts, Plains Indians made their artistic and spiritual sensibilities. offerings to the buffalo spirits because they Over the Rocky Mountains to the east, believed the boundaries between people and the Plains Indians likewise developed animals were blurred. Following the hunt, “increasingly effective subsistence strategies they often used every part of the animal: the over the millennia” (Ray 1996, 13). Huge meat for food, the bones for tools, the hides Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 17

and fur for clothing, the skins for making mobile lodgings (teepees), buffalo chips for THE HORSE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF PLAINS SOCIETIES cooking fuel, bladders for receptacles, and The Blackfoot Confederacy, or and Assiniboine, by 1750. The horse sinews for bow strings and cordage. Niitstapi, composed of tribes that transformed the buffalo hunt and, In the Eastern Woodlands and Subarctic, inhabit present-day Montana and with it, Plains Indians. As the kill Aboriginal peoples can be grouped into two southern Alberta, first encountered became more efficient, tribes became language families: Algonkian or Iroquoian. the horse around 1730. Spanish wealthier and enjoyed a higher The Algonkians hunted, fished, and gathered explorers brought the horse to the standard of living. Wealth and power, berries and nuts for sustenance. In this harsh New World by ship in the sixteenth combined with increased mobility, led century, and the animals eventually to more intertribal warfare and the climate, they roamed incessantly in search of spread north. The Blackfoot traded development of warrior societies. animals for food and clothing. When Euro­ some to their neighbours, the Cree peans first made contact with the Algonkians on the Atlantic coast at the end of the fif- teenth century, these nomadic forest peoples had occupied the same places for generations. between ecological, linguistic, and cultural From Yukon to Labrador, various groups boundaries” (Trigger 1969, 6, 14). The Wenro, hunted within territorial boundaries that Erie, Neutral, and Petun peoples lived north remained fluid. They assumed that all phe- of the Great Lakes, where they grew and nomena, including the dead and animals, traded tobacco. The powerful Huron had spirit power. The hunt was a spiritual Confederacy (called Wendat, meaning quest in which the hunter’s soul spirit would “islanders” or “peninsula dwellers”) lived lead him to game that had agreed to be slain. near Penetanguishene on Lake Huron. The hunters’ sense of kinship with game The confederacy consisted of four nations animals suffused Algonkian culture. Their – People of the Bear, People of the Rocks, respect for nature and taboos controlled and the Cord People, and the Deer People – moderated human behaviour. Hunters were names all drawn from the natural world. occasionally wasteful, but their culture often The Huron were distinctive in that they inhibited them from overexploiting wildlife. lived on the northern limits of fertile land Their mobile lifestyle also led them to adopt that could be cultivated, and they practised the canoe; light, portable housing; and a few intensive agriculture. They used the slash- easy-to-carry utensils. This way of life lim- and-burn method to clear areas of forests and ited their possessions and stores of food, and weeds. They then intercropped, or planted it probably helped keep their population together, the “three sisters” – beans, corn, levels low. Their patterns of living were well and squash – on large, well-spaced mounds. suited to their environment. Archaeological evidence of ridged, furrowed, The Iroquoian “forest” peoples were like- and raised fields suggests that they used wise diverse but “inhabited a single ecologic- various techniques to reduce frost hazards. al zone of deciduous forest with coniferous They also kept gardens for emergency seed admixture.” Their material culture and soci- supplies in case crops failed. After ten to eties resulted from a noteworthy “correlation twelve years of cultivation, they abandoned Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 18 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

char in the summer. Even with small num-

DORSET ARTWORK: REFLECTIONS OF A HARSH ENVIRONMENT bers, people sometimes starved during the scarce winter months. In the summer, they The Dorset peoples artwork, like religious significance, and the lived in tents made of seal or muskox skins. Inuit art in general, reflects a culture Dorset possibly used them as amulets In the winter, they built sod and stone huts shaped by a harsh, cruel environment, to ward off evil spirits or in shamanic in the ground. When they hunted seals, they one in which animals were the main rituals. Carvers often depicted the source of survival. Their artwork largest predator in their world, the probably built igloos on sea ice. After living consisted of small sculptures of polar bear. Their sculptures of bears for about five centuries in the Arctic, some humans, animals, and birds carved with slit throats filled with red ochre Dorset communities disappeared as a result in bone, antler, ivory, soapstone, and and ivory slivers perhaps played a of environmental distress, brought on by a wood. These figures had a magical or key role in hunting rituals. cooling period between 550 bce and 400 ce. When temperatures rose again after 400 ce, they enjoyed a more predictable environ- ment and a surge of creativity in the arts. exhausted fields to lie fallow. The Huron Around 1000 ce, the Thule, ancestors learned to make various tuberous plants of the modern Inuit, moved rapidly across edible, they tapped maple trees for sap to the Arctic from the west and displaced or convert to sugar, they wove mats and baskets absorbed the Dorset. Warmer temperatures from reeds, and they turned clay into cooking and changing ice conditions provided the pots. Because their more sedentary lifestyle Thule with an opportunity to move eastward and food crops sustained more people, the through sea ice passages in pursuit of sea Huron were more numerous than the north- mammals, including whales, seals, and wal- ern Algonkian hunter-gatherer societies with rus. The Thule also had more advanced tech- whom they traded. They numbered about nology and better weaponry than the Dorset, thirty thousand people at the time of contact including projectile-point tools and spears. with Europeans. Thule hunters travelled on water in skin In the Arctic, Aboriginal peoples moved boats and used dog sleds and bows and ar- through a harsh environment on a seasonal rows to hunt caribou on land. Their decora- basis to hunt seal, caribou, muskox, and tive art was functional and less spiritual than small birds and animals. The Dorset, a Paleo- Dorset creations. Eskimo culture that lived along the coast of The Beothuk, who inhabited Newfound­ Labrador and Newfoundland, developed land at the time of contact, likewise eked sturdy hide kayaks for water travel, sleds for out a living in their inhospitable environ- snow travel, and made harpoons and small ment. With ingenuity and inventiveness, tools out of stone, bone, wood, and ivory. they used available resources to build half- Their rectangular soapstone lamps burned moon-shaped birch bark canoes, complex oil from whale blubber for heat and light. conical dwellings called mamateeks, and The Dorset people’s precarious existence fences to hunt caribou. They covered the depended on hunting seal and walrus in the mamateeks with birch bark and, in winter, spring and summer and fishing for Arctic insulated them with dried moss and banked Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 19

them with soil. The Beothuk population was small but viable. The island’s limited resour- THE THULE: MOVERS OF BOULDERS ces, however, could not accommodate other peoples, such as the Mi’kmaq. The situation The Thule used rocks for many humans, to mark a featureless snow- led to competition and hostility between the purposes: to hold down tents and covered landscape or to channel boats, to identify winter villages, to caribou toward waiting hunters. By two peoples. build cairns for their dead, to protect moving boulders, the Thule altered meat supplies, and to build dams or the landscape and left numerous Aboriginal Perceptions of and Approaches weirs to intercept runs of Arctic char. traces of their presence for modern to the Land They also built inuksuit (plural of archaeologists. inukshuk), rocks piled to resemble Aboriginal peoples adapted to new environ- ments out of necessity. They also modified their environments to suit their needs. They marked the land with rocks, paths, and land occupied by other species. Spirits, they settlements. They used fire for multiple believed, inhabited these species and had purposes: for heat and light; to clear fields varying degrees of power. Aboriginal people and campsites; as a weapon; for communica- sought to live harmoniously with the spirits tion; to enhance the production of certain by making offerings to them, along with foods and medicinal plants; to attract, hunt, beseeching prayers and gifts. They prayed to and drive wildlife; and to improve grazing ward off diseases caused by evil spirits and for horses after they acquired them. By set- to ensure their own safety when crossing ting fire to prairie grasslands, for example, dangerous river passages. Aboriginal people created and maintained Aboriginal peoples’ distinctive customs fire-succession ecosystems. They kept back and art expressed their fear of the environ- forests and enhanced soils. In forested areas, ment and respect for its animate and in­ they created edge habitats that attracted deer animate inhabitants. Feasts, ceremonies, and combatted insect infestations. These traditions, and stories, including creation practices, which sometimes escaped their narratives, were part of indigenous peoples’ control, nevertheless reflected their ecological spiritual lives and religious ideas. They re- knowledge of the land and their ability to flected their relationship with nature and manipulate it. helped to integrate their societies. Their Aboriginal people’s integration with the animistic religions – religions in which all environment and knowledge of the natural things, animate or inanimate, have souls or world led them to view their surroundings spirits – did not distinguish between human, from both material and spiritual perspec- plant, and animal. They respected and pla- tives. Besides living off the land, Aboriginal cated them all. Although Aboriginal people peoples developed cultural customs, religious hunted animals, they shared their environ- ideas, and myths and taboos to live safely ment with them and developed rituals to and to better understand their place in the show their respect. Within their worldview, world. They inhabited a vast, dark, and silent human beings did not hold a special place Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 20 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

in the cosmos – they were but one element ments, the incursion of the Norse ended among many in an integrated environment. when Aboriginal people drove them out. This worldview meant accommodation with While in the New World, the Norse de- other species and with nature. Pre-contact pended on their own technology – including farming and hunter-gatherer societies under- their magnificent ships, weapons, and iron stood their environment. They had to if they tools – to maintain themselves, acquire re- hoped to maintain their culture, a food sup- sources, and complete trading expeditions. ply, and a manageable population level. They But they were not self-sufficient, and they were people who “adapted to their environ- could not survive without Aboriginal­ allies ment and worked out a code of behaviour to teach them the geography, assist them in for living compatibly with their world” acquiring trade goods, and instruct them in (Miller 1989, 13). skills to live in such a harsh environment. Aboriginal peoples retained control of their Early Explorers: The Norse environment. Leif Eiriksson, son of Eirik the Red, is Unlike self-sufficient Aboriginal peoples, credited with the first landings in North who lived in sync with their surroundings, America. He landed on and named three the first Europeans to reach the North Amer­ areas: Helluland, the “land of flat stones,” ican continent were traders who came to on the east coast of Baffin Island; Markland, exploit the new land. Land hunger, trade, and the “land of forests and timber,” in central the desire for wealth and fame – if necessary, Labrador; and Vinland, “a warm and bounti- through piracy and war – motivated the ful land,” most likely the northern tip of Norse to move overseas. A land shortage Newfoundland, the site of the Norse village in Scandinavia placed limits on crops and L’Anse aux Meadows. Indigenous peoples animal husbandry. Their agriculture-based had used the site around the village for hunt- economy needed new pastures and grass for ing and fishing for thousands of years. When grazing animals, and global warming in the Leif’s brother Thorvald encountered indigen- centuries between 800 and 1200 ce facilitated ous people, probably Dorset or Thule, during their explorations. the second expedition to Vinland in 1004, he The Norse landed in what is today the provoked hostilities and died from an arrow Arctic and Newfoundland and Labrador in wound. His crew retreated, wintered at Leifs­ 1000 ce. They stayed a relatively short time, budir, a settlement founded by Leif, and but they traded on return voyages. And sailed home in the spring. although they had only a slight environ- Other Norse traders and explorers like- mental impact on the land, their brief stay wise encountered Aboriginal peoples, such in the so-called New World resulted in the as the early Algonkians (Point Revenge and earliest meeting of Aboriginal peoples (called Beothuk peoples), as they sailed through icy Skraelings by the Norse) and Europeans. waters along the windy eastern shores of Unlike European explorations of centuries Baffin Island, Newfoundland, and Labrador. later, which resulted in permanent settle- Thorfinn Karlsefni, of Iceland, reached Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 21

Helluland and Markland between 1003 Perhaps the climate, on the eve of the Little and 1015 and explored other areas, which Ice Age, which would overtake Europe and he named. He and his crew acquired trade North America from around 1300 to 1870, items, such as polar bear pelts, walrus tusks, was too cool. It seems the Norse were not narwhal horns, and eider ducks. Later, on carriers of European pathogens. For whatever a trip to Europe, Karlsefni sold his ship’s reason, Aboriginal people were not exposed figure­head, carved of maple from Vinland, to European diseases. Consequently, they did to a man from Bremen. It was possibly the not suffer the destabilization and depopula- first crafted import from North America to tion that followed the Columbian exchange. Europe. Karlsefni, too, tried to colonize Vinland, but he also encountered Aboriginal European Expansionism people, probably Beothuk. He bartered either milk or red cloth for furs. An outbreak The early Norse period of exploration was of hostilities, however, caused the Norse to largely forgotten in Europe. Although the abandon their outpost after only a few years. Norse maintained settlements in Greenland They returned to their more established until about the mid-fifteenth century, they colonies in Greenland, settled by the Danes abandoned their sailing route to North in 986, and made no further colonization America when increasing ice in the Atlantic efforts in North America. Brief trips (perhaps made sailing too dangerous. With the excep- to Labrador or Baffin Island) for timber and tion of annual voyages across the Atlantic by furs ceased after cooler temperatures and European fishermen, European exploration ice killed expedition members from Iceland did not begin in earnest until the late fif- in 1347. teenth century, when Christopher Columbus’s Throughout the period of Norse explora- voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 and tions, Aboriginal peoples and the Norse John Cabot’s rediscovery of North America encountered each other only sporadically. in 1497 led to general awareness of the The Thule’s encounters with the Norse in American continents. both Greenland and in what would become These so-called discoveries coincided in Canada suggest a relationship defined by western Europe with the emergence of im- occasional trade and conflict. Trade was perialism, the policy of extending a nation’s mutually beneficial: the Thule wanted iron, authority by territorial acquisition or eco- and the Norse wanted animal hides and nomic and political hegemony over other ivory. By the thirteenth century, the Thule nations. The process of imperial expansion had meteoric iron and had acquired smelted led European states with advanced technolo- iron, which they valued for tools and tips gies to invade remote lands occupied by on weapons. These most northern hunter- migratory farmers and hunter-gatherers, gatherers traded occasionally with the Norse whom they displaced. These incursions were but were not interested in lengthy connec- premised on notions of superiority, conquest, tions. They drove the Norse out of the con- and environmental exploitation for com­ tinent. Perhaps the contact was too brief. mercial gain. Unlike Aboriginal peoples, Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 22 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

Europeans believed, as both Greek philoso- ments, fishermen pursued whales, fished for phy and Christianity taught them, that their cod, and traded European goods for falcons, minds and spirit made them superior to polar bears, and ivory along the coast. Years nature, which was for human benefit, if only after the Norse retreated, European fishers it could be mastered. Although Aboriginal continued to arrive annually to harvest cod, people admired aspects of European tech­ seals, and whales. The Catholic Church had nology that could make their lives easier, stimulated a burgeoning market for Atlantic Europeans held the myopic view that in- cod (Gadus morhua) by declaring fish a suit- digenous people were inferior beings that able food for meatless religious holy days. lacked both society and culture. Upon hear- When the building of larger ships enabled ing of the New World, Europeans instinct- travel for longer distances, the cod fishery ively looked for exploitable goods. They expanded. Despite high casualty rates in the started with fish and then moved to furs. frigid northern seas, more European fishers The history of Canada, consequently, is sent out ships, which returned with enor- partly a story of resources exploitation. mous hauls. John Cabot’s successful voyage to Newfoundland in 1497 further publicized The Early Fisheries the immense marine resources of the north- west Atlantic. At about the same time that the Norse The profitable Grand Banks fishery, abandoned their settlements in Greenland, located southeast of Newfoundland on the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and North American continental shelf, supplied English sailors entered the North Atlantic in cod to Europe and drove further exploration. search of fish. Although knowledge of west- The fishery was an open-access resource, and ern lands, in general, had faded in Europe nations mingled fairly amicably, except in and had been consigned to saga texts, it had times of war. By the late sixteenth century, lived on in the stories and knowledge of hundreds of fishing and whaling fleets with ordinary fishermen. With the Norse settle- thousands of men set sail for the Grand

BASQUE FISHERMAN AND OVERFISHING IN THE GRAND BANKS

Basques were among the goods for seal skins, and they a Euskara or Basque word. In southern walrus, and the deple- earliest fishermen to arrive in developed a pidgin dialect to other words, Basque fishermen tion of seabird colonies. They Newfound­land. They hunted communicate with indigenous had established a presence in harvested enormous amounts of whales and found the Grand peoples. When explorer John the New World long before cod. Given that both whales and Banks bountiful with cod. They Cabot wrote about the abun- Cabots visit. In the sixteenth cod feed on crustacean zoo- enjoyed friendly relations with dance of cod in the region, he century, Basque whalers plankton, it is possible that some coastal peoples, such as noted that Aboriginal peoples affected the environment by smaller whale populations the Montagnais, but poor rela- called it baccalaos. This was not contributing to the precipitous actually increased cod stocks tions with the Inuit. The Basques an Aboriginal word but rather a decline in bowhead whales, the around the end of the sixteenth sometimes traded European derivation of bakalaua, extinction of right whales and century. Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 23

Banks each year. In 1578, for example, migration. Because the capture of large English merchant Anthony Parkhurst esti- fish influences the rate of reproduction mated that there were nearly 400 ships in among cod, even the early fisheries’ “moder- Newfoundland – 150 were French, 100 ate” catches would have altered the age, Spanish (Basque), 50 Portuguese, 30 to 50 gender composition, and overall size of English, and 20 to 30 Basque. They pro- Atlantic cod. cessed an estimated 75,000 tonnes of fish Although the fishermen were only so- annually. The trade required unprecedented journers in the New World, they explored skills and large amounts of capital and and made their mark on the coastal regions labour. Europeans adapted their fishing of Newfoundland. Fishing crews landed on practices to meet the harsh conditions of the Terra Nova to rest, to gather fresh water new environment. Each country acquired and wood, and to dry fish on the shores. favourite fishing spots and used various Migratory fishers in the dry fisheries needed fishing tools and methods in their fisheries. cabins, wharves, flakes to dry fish, washing Fishermen developed fish oil and wet cod cages, and sometimes oil vats. They stripped for northern European markets and dried trees from old-growth boreal forests, took cod for markets in southern Europe and the more wood than they needed, left much to West Indies. Merchants managed fishers, rot, and sometimes started forest fires, which and governments, in turn, managed mer- destroyed flora and fauna. The environment- chants. The fur trade began as part of the al damage was limited, however, because fishery but later developed into a separate they did not move too far inland. But by industry. 1620 the forests were noticeably less dense. Codfish stocks remained abundant in the European fishers had a more permanent Newfoundland fishery despite prolonged effect on those Aboriginal people who had to colder temperatures during the Little Ice Age compete with them for summer fishing sites. and fluctuations in catches. It is difficult to Some made special trading or raiding trips estimate the size of catches, but they were to obtain goods from fishermen. Fishermen greater than any catch made by the small traded iron, cloth, and arms for furs, which Inuit population, and advances in gear tech- returned to Europe with the large cod catch- nology increased catch levels over time. The es. By the late sixteenth century, European catch level remained sustainable throughout traders were meeting the Mi’kmaq regularly the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at summer rendezvous sites to barter, and the probably because of relatively low-tech Mi’kmaq were changing their hunting pat- fishing methods. Much like their modern terns to engage in this trade. The Beothuk, counterparts, early fishermen reacted to in contrast, lost their summer fishing sites reduced catches by either moving to new to the Europeans and came to depend more fishing areas or changing their methods. and more on the interior for resources. Biologists have recently suggested that con- Meagre resources, infectious diseases, and tinued, intense, unregulated fishing depleted violent encounters with Europeans drove stocks and might have encouraged cod them to extinction. Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 24 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

European Explorers Chart a New wasteful behaviour by fur traders, loggers, and Environment settlers. While sailing near the Grand Banks in 1497, for example, Cabot noted that the The impact of European expansion was fish were so abundant they slowed the boat. limited to a small geographical area during In 1501, Gaspar Corte-Real, the Portuguese the era of the early fisheries, a situation that explorer, recorded that he saw plentiful changed once European rulers turned their game – caribou, foxes, sables, otters, wolves, sights on the New World. Competitive and tigers (probably black leopards) – in expansionary politics in Europe, scientific Newfound­land. In 1534, when Cartier, curiosity, technological developments in exploring for France, approached what he navigation (compasses, quadrants, and astro- called the Isle of Birds (Funk Island) off the labes), and larger ships spurred explorers coast of New­foundland, he described a land west­ward. Cartographers recorded new where bears swam out to feed on birds and discoveries on maps as the European world where gannets, murres, and puffins nested. became more connected by trade and com- The great auk, the original “penguin,” now merce. From the beginning, Europeans extinct, he observed, was as large as a goose, viewed the New World as a bountiful land. “being black and white with a beak like a In particular, they sought a shorter sea pas- crow’s.” Its small wings rendered it incapable sage to Asia – the famed Northwest Passage of flying (Cook 1993, xvii). The crew killed – and new resources to exploit. Their acquisi­ over a thousand murres and great auks. Sir tiveness extended to scientific inquiries that Humphrey Gilbert, an English explorer who facilitated imperial aims. landed in Newfoundland in 1583, wrote that The Age of Exploration began in northern nature made up for the terrible cold weather North America in 1497, when Britain spon- “with incredible quantity and no less variety sored Genovese merchant John Cabot’s of all kinds of fish in the sea and fresh waters, (Giovanni Caboto) search for the Northwest as trouts, salmons and other fish to us un- Passage to Asia. The exact place of Cabot’s known; also cod which alone draweth many landing is unknown, but the possibilities nations thither.” He observed that the many range from the Strait of Belle Isle to Cape creatures “may induce us to glorify the mag- Breton. This first recorded European landing nificent God, who hath superabundantly since the Norse led to a better cartographic replenished the earth with creatures serving understanding of what Europeans soon for the use of man, though man hath not used realized was a large continent. the fifth part of same” (Payne 1900, 30). Perhaps because early explorers such as Despite their initial fear of the unknown Cabot and Jacques Cartier did not venture and wild animals, explorers evaluated the new far beyond coastlines, their early impressions environment for exploitable commodities. were of an unending, abundant “wilderness,” When Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano an earthly paradise or pristine environment explored the East Coast from Newfoundland inhabited by only a few people. This notion to the Carolinas for the French Crown in of abundance persisted and set the stage for 1524, he searched the forests for suitable wood Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 25

and examined rocks for minerals. Both Cabot not encourage permanent settlements until and Corte-Real commented that the region’s changing markets made Canada a valuable tall trees would be ideal for ships’ masts. Old- source of raw materials. growth forests, now almost beyond our com- prehension, were a new, valuable source of First Contacts wood because timber in Europe was becom- ing a scarce commodity. When Cartier aban- Europeans’ entry into the New World over- doned his settlement on the St. Lawrence turned thousands of years of Aboriginal and returned to France in 1542, he took with predominance in only a few hundred years. him pyrites and quartz that he thought were First contact, the first meeting of two cultures, gold and diamonds. As Martin Frobisher was a long process in Canada that took sailed through the eastern Arctic in 1576 in centuries as explorers and fur traders charted search of the Northwest Passage, he col- the new environment. These first encounters, lected 203 tonnes of mineral samples, which described by Europeans as “discoveries,” later proved worthless. Although members began in 1498, when Cabot bartered a pair of of several expeditions met Aboriginal people Venetian earrings and a sword with Labrador who wanted to trade furs, the trade did not Algonkians and gave netting needles to Inuit. begin in earnest until fashion trends in The first recorded encounter on the Pacific Europe increased demand for fur. Coast occurred nearly three hundred years Although the New World in general later, in 1774, when the Spanish navigator was viewed as bountiful, explorers described Juan Perez exchanged clothes, beads, and northern regions in less flattering terms. knives for sea otter skins from the Haida. Although Verrazano, reminded of Vergil’s Four years later, James Cook spotted the Arcady, referred to southern regions as Arcadia, West Coast from aboard the Resolution and Cartier described Labrador’s barren coast as discovered that Russian fur-trading compan- the “land God gave to Cain.” A member of ies had hunted sea otter and walrus in the Frobisher’s expedition remarked, “In place of region for years. He sailed past the Strait odiferous and fragrant smells of sweet gums of Juan de Fuca to Nootka Sound, where and pleasant notes of musical birds, which men in huge canoes greeted him and traded other countries in more temperate zones do fine sea otter skins for a few nails. His crew yield, we tasted the most boisterous Boreal then headed north to the limits of the North blasts mixed with snow and hail in the American coast in the Arctic in search of an months of June and July, nothing inferior to opening into the continent. First contacts our intemperate winter” (Honour 1975, 16). ended in 1910 when the Copper Inuit met The comment is one of the earliest recorded explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson near Victoria complaints about Canada’s weather. Because Island in the Arctic. imports from the north – cod, pelts, and Explorers’ accounts of first contacts reflect wood – were not as enticing as gold from their cultural bias, which influenced how Spanish conquests or spices from the East they viewed the landscape and the people Indies, the French and British Crowns did who inhabited it. Explorers proclaimed their Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 26 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

figure 1.4 Cartier Plants a Cross at Gaspe 1534: Symbols of pos­session, such as Cartiers fifty-foot wooden cross, justified European expansion but made Aboriginal people hostile or sus- picious of European encroachments on their environment. Charles W. Jefferys, illustrator, The Picture Gallery of Canadian History (Toronto: Ryerson, 1950), 1:73

THE MYTH OF DISCOVERY, HISTORY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

The idea that Europeans had substantially. It is now estimated them, but Canada was, neverthe- momentous process because it discovered or found an empty that 60 to 100 million lived in less, a land inhabited by diverse justified Europeans aggressive new continent justified their North and South America com- peoples who had complex intrusion into the new environ- desire to conquer it. Until re- bined and that 4 to 11 million material cultures and spiritual ment. Environmental historians cently, historians upheld this people lived in North America beliefs, people who manipulated continue to view contact as myth of discovery by estimating, alone. The indigenous popula- their environment­ with fire and important, but they examine it incorrectly, that the Aboriginal tion of northern North America by hunting, cultivating, har- from the perspective of how population at first contact had was relatively sparse, about vesting, and gathering food. imperialism and colonialism been low. New, scientific meth­ 500,000 people, and lacked This misconception about popu- affected the peoples and land- ods have raised estimates cities, as Europeans understood lation numbers made contact a scape of the New World. Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 27

“discoveries” with symbols of possession – people likewise treated Europeans who such as Cabot’s English flags and Cartier’s appeared at the “edge of the water, woods, fifty-foot wooden cross with a French coat plains, or desert” as powerful spirits or of arms – and claimed territory on behalf of shamans (Axtell 1992, 26, 35-37). And they their sovereigns without regard for Aboriginal interpreted European technology as having peoples (see Figure 1.4). Cartier saw no reason extraordinary spiritual power. They exam- to ask permission to explore or establish settle­ ined cloth, metal goods, compasses, and ments. He, like most Europeans, believed books with fascination. At first, they re- that Aboriginal people had wasted the land sponded most positively to trinkets such as by not rendering it productive. In another glass beads, which they buried with their kind of possession, he and other explorers dead because they associated them with gave European names to flora, fauna, and natural materials that brought physical, places, without a care that they already had spiritual, and social well-being. Aboriginal names. Aboriginal peoples welcomed the new- Contact, however, was a momentous two- comers by giving their boats the best anchor- way process of discovery and acculturation. ages. They carried Cartier ashore so he would Both cultures had only a rudimentary under- not get wet, seated guests on skins or mats, standing of the world’s geography, were vul- and entertained them with speeches, dancing, nerable to food scarcity, and were fearful of singing, and games. Aboriginal people recog- their uncertain environments. Europeans nized that these encounters with Europeans had more advanced technology, but unlike might have serious consequences and tried indigenous peoples, they had poor personal to assimilate the “aliens” into their society hygiene and a poor understanding of medi- to ensure peace. In the east, they smoked cine. Many Europeans had grown up in the calumet pipe with their visitors because crowded, filthy cities and showed signs of ill tobacco was sacred and lifted their prayers to health and poor physical development. By heaven. Across the land, they offered mar- comparison, Aboriginal people were physic- riages and the adoption of children, perhaps ally strong and healthy. because they sensed that the newcomers’ Whereas written European accounts of power could be a double-edged sword. Euro­ first contacts predominated in traditional peans at first depended on Aboriginal people historical narratives, oral accounts passed for information about the environment. They from generation to generation among Ab­ engaged them as guides, translators, and original people. In 1633, a young Montagnais provisioners and were careful not to offend who lived along the St. Lawrence related his for fear of being abandoned in the woods or grand­mother’s story of seeing French ships attacked. Aboriginal people had the upper for the first time. The Montagnais thought hand in the relationship, as indicated by the “floating islands” were inhabited by super­ European efforts to learn their languages. natural spirits and mistook the sails for clouds But as Europeans learned more, they became and the cannon discharges for thunder. more dominant, and unlike the Norse, they During other first contacts, Aboriginal kept coming. Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press figure 1.5 Hudsons The Columbian Exchange Joseph Banks, the director of the Royal Bay Company canoe Gardens at Kew, who had been on Cook’s manned by voyageurs passing a waterfall Environmental transformation and cultural first voyage. In the 1820s, James Douglas, Frances Anne Hopkins, artist, 1869, an explorer and naturalist, sent plants, in- Library and Archives Canada, change began as soon as the peoples from the Frances Anne Hopkins fonds, two hemispheres met. As historian William cluding the Sitka spruce, to Britain. Euro­ C-002771 Cronon notes, two human communities peans gained corn, potatoes, and tobacco confronted each other for the first time, and from the New World and absorbed indigen- two sets of ecological relationships came to ous peoples’ knowledge about plants into inhabit one world. The massive exchange of European botany and medicine. ideas, diseases, and agricultural goods and The exchange of knowledge and new the intermingling of North American and plants and crops went both ways. Samuel de European biota – animal and plant life – that Champlain, who founded New France and followed first contacts quickly shattered the Quebec City in 1608, encouraged the growth relationship between Aboriginal peoples and of French crops such as wheat and barley in their environment. his colony along the St. Lawrence. They did The Columbian exchange was an uneven well in the fertile, previously untilled soil. exchange. Europeans affected the New World When settlers and missionaries migrated, more than Aboriginal peoples influenced the they carried seeds and brought domesticated Old. Cartier made notes on edible fruits and animals, such as cattle and pigs, previously nuts and took slips of trees and seeds to unknown to Aboriginal people. Ships not France for the king’s garden at Fontainebleu. only carried explorers and settlers, they also Most expeditions had naturalists. In 1792, carried weeds, insects, and diseases that ran for example, Archibald Menzies, a surgeon- rampant and transformed the ecological botanist, arrived on the West Coast with systems of the New World and the health British explorer George Vancouver. He was of Aboriginal people. the first European to describe, catalogue, and European diseases caused drastic de­ collect West Coast trees, plants, and seeds, clines in indigenous populations – in some communities, only 10 percent of people whichSample he took to EnglandMaterial for his mentor, © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 29

survived – and assisted European occupation and conquest. Pre-contact Aboriginal soci- DISEASES IN THE NEW WORLD eties had by no means been disease-free, but The spread of diseases  including Plains Indians. The smallpox epidemic because Aboriginal people lived in small smallpox, cholera, measles, influenza, of 1781 killed at least a third of almost mobile groups and in a cool climate free of and tuberculosis  from Europeans to every band. Between 1819 and 1839, domesticated animals, they were relatively Aboriginal peoples was an ongoing measles reduced the Cree from 3,000 safe. Archaeological findings indicate that process that accompanied, if not to 1,600 people, and smallpox spread some undernourished peoples suffered from preceded, European expansion among the Assiniboine. A smallpox endemic pathologies – diseases restricted to throughout the continent. Between epidemic in 1862-63 reduced the 1760 and 1820, for example, fur population of the Queen Charlotte certain areas or populations – but the effects traders introduced diseases to the Islands by almost 90 percent. of such diseases were insignificant compared to Old World pathogens, against which indigenous peoples lacked antibodies. When Jesuit priests brought measles to the Huron of Native life from imported diseases” and in 1636 and smallpox in 1640, the epidemics “the extinction of more species of life forms cut the Huron population in half within a in the last 400 years than the usual processes few years. Drastic population declines un- of evolution might kill off in a million” years. hinged and destabilized Aboriginal societies. The result? “A more impoverished genetic They caused starvation, conflict, and the pool” (Crosby 1994, 180). Such pessimism is merger of different groups when survivors understandable, given the plight of indigen- adopted refugees and orphans. Territories ous peoples and the downward trajectory of were cleared of people, cleared land reverted the planet’s environmental health to the to woods, and wildlife increased. Newcomers present. But the interaction between ecology moved in, only to start the process all over and empire is a complex historical process again. that defies simplistic interpretations. The Historians tend to view the Columbian results of the Columbian exchange were not exchange negatively, as a form of biological simply destructive. The New World’s eco- imperialism. In the 1930s, geographer Carl systems proved to be resilient and dynamic. Sauer lamented the extensive biological Pre-contact Aboriginal societies were viable changes brought on by contact between and sustainable, but so too were postcontact what he called the ecological islands of Asia, European settler societies. In some cases, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. More Europeans’ drive for wealth and expansion recently, historian William H. McNeill has led to the productive management of resour- argued that the unification of the planet ces, improved living standards, and increased inaugurated by Columbus either damaged population numbers. or destroyed local forms of life, human and nonhuman, and made possible political The Competition for Furs conquest and settlement (McNeill 1976). Alfred Crosby, who coined the term Colum­ When Europeans encountered the New bian exchange, writes of the “cataclysmic loss World, they not only brought new diseases Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 30 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

and flora and fauna, they also “thrust com- When furs brought to France by fisher- mercialized human predation across the men began to turn a reliable profit, the North Atlantic Ocean. Commercial hunting Crown set its sights on establishing an over- proved to be the most lucrative way to exploit seas empire and a large-scale fur trade, which the northernmost regions of the Americas” would operate from a base in the Gulf of St. (Richards 2005, 463). The trade in furs – sea Lawrence. Champlain, following Cartier’s otter, beaver, buffalo – depended on long- route, surveyed the area between 1603 and term, shifting alliances between French and 1635 and chose the location for permanent English traders and Aboriginal peoples that settlements. Meanwhile, the British were transformed the environment by depleting busy founding the populous and prosperous wildlife, hastening the spread of disease, Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic seaboard disrupting ecosystems, and marginalizing to the south and searching for the North­ indigenous peoples. The fur trade began west Passage in the North. In 1610, explorer casually on the Atlantic Coast around 1580, Henry Hudson discovered a passage into when European fishers and whalers traded the interior – Hudson Bay – to rival the St. goods for furs. It quickly developed into Lawrence River. Growing imperial rivalry an enormous separate industry fuelled by led the British to establish the Hudson’s Bay European fashions, particularly an insatiable Company (HBC) in 1670 and fur-trading demand for hats made from felted beaver posts on both Hudson and James Bays. Over fur. Hunters depleted beaver populations the next century, the French competed ef- in Europe and Russia and turned to North fectively with the British by expanding the America as an opportune new source for the trade westward along the continent’s north- fur. By 1750, beaver pelts amounted to about ern rivers to the Great Lakes and beyond. 40 percent of all skins sent abroad from Wars between France and England and their North America. Aboriginal allies resulted in the Iroquois’ Competition for furs and the exhaustion destruction of Huronia in 1648; the British of beaver fields heightened imperial rivalries expulsion of the French Acadians from between France and England and sparked present-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, further exploration of the continent. The and Prince Edward Island; and the Conquest territorial reach of the trade quickly exceeded of New France in 1763. the limits of settlement. Encouraged by After the Conquest, French traders found- traders, Aboriginal hunters pursued beaver ed the North West Company (NWC) in in the Maritimes, up the St. Lawrence, along Montreal and resumed the spatial expansion eastern interior rivers such as the Saguenay, of the trade. Between 1774 and 1821, when St. Maurice, and Ottawa, through the Great the HBC gained a monopoly over the trade, Lakes, and beyond the forested areas of the French traders built 351 posts, the HBC 250. Canadian Shield onto the Great Plains. The When the United States gained independ- fur trade eventually extended over the Rocky ence from Britain in 1776, the British lost Mountains to the Pacific Coast and north trade in the American West and, in re­ into the Athabasca region (see Figure 1.6). sponse, expanded the fur trade north into Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 31

the Sub­arctic and west to the Pacific Coast. The expansion of the trade had an en- figure 1.6 Major fur trade routes. Competi- Peter Pond, American fur trader and a vironmental impact that extended far beyond tion between the British founder of the North West Company, the exhaustion of beaver populations. The and French led fur traders reached the Athabasca country by land in expanding trade required infrastructure such to develop different routes through the inter- 1778. The following decade, Aboriginal as forts and trading posts, ports for York boats ior. Settlements both guides led Scottish fur trader Alexander on Hudson Bay, and roads that reshaped the preceded and emerged to service the trade. Mackenzie through the interior, north to landscape. By the late 1700s, the St. Lawrence Great Slave Lake, and up what would be fur trade’s long supply lines included roads named the Mackenzie River to the Beaufort built around portages on the Ottawa River, Sea. On behalf of the North West Company, a canal at Sault Ste. Marie, ships on Lake Mackenzie evaluated the river systems for Superior, and supply bases farther west. Fur use as fur trade routes to the Pacific. In 1793, trade expansion intensified conflict among Aboriginal guides led him to the Pacific Aboriginal hunters and between the French Ocean, completing the European penetration and British, which meant more fortified posts of northern North America. Simon Fraser and garrisons. Various Aboriginal groups built the first fur trade post west of the competed for middleman status. European Rockies in 1805. traders depended on middlemen to retrieve Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 32 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

furs from interior tribes in exchange for As they moved toward commercial hunting, Euro­pean goods. Middlemen then delivered power shifted in favour of Europeans, just the pelts to the posts in exchange for more as the physical location of Aboriginal groups European goods. The trading companies took themselves shifted. Tribes and nations adapt- sides to secure fur trade routes and to main- ed to their role in the trade by changing their tain cooperation from Aboriginal people, spatial distribution. Declining game resour- who guided traders, hunted, trapped, and ces in forested areas and lethal diseases forced prepared furs. Conflict among Aborig­inal Aboriginal people away from Hudson Bay. groups resulted in more aggressive hunting The Assiniboine and Cree, who once occu- and more efficient depletion of resources. pied the Eastern Woodlands, pushed west Wars between Aboriginal groups became onto the Great Plains. They became buffalo more deadly after traders introduced hunters who acquired horses from the firearms. Blackfoot and guns from traders. Spatial expansion, imperial rivalry, and The fur trade was “perhaps the single most war marked the fur trade as it opened up important conduit for contact” and changed the interior and revealed its main waterways Aboriginal peoples’ behaviour, hunting prac- and major geographical regions. The notion tices, and relationship to the environment of abundance promulgated by explorers (Richards 2005, 474). European markets persisted. The partners of trading companies and imperial rivalries drove the trade, but maintained a rapacious view of the natural Aboriginal peoples’ desire for European world and a sense of entitlement in relation goods was persistent, cumulative, and in to their Aboriginal partners, whom they the case of guns and alcohol, devastating. In pressured to overharvest wildlife. Many the early years, when furs could be obtained voyageurs, the ordinary men who trans­ without difficulty, trade goods made Aborig­ ported furs, did not want to control the inal peoples’ lives easier. They could exploit landscape, but they served those who did. the French-English rivalry to receive gifts The voyageurs were mobile people who and better-quality goods suitable to the believed in nonaccumulation. In this sense, northern climate and conditions. As Aborig­ they were similar to Aboriginal hunter- inal people became dependent on European gatherers, but they worked on contract for goods, however, some forgot the old ways. European commercial companies intent The Montagnais were among the first nations on profit through plunder. to stop making pottery or cooking in bark containers. It was easier to acquire European The Fur Trades Impact on Aboriginal goods “in exchange for skins which cost them People almost nothing” (Denys 1908 [1672], 442). The Upland Assiniboine and Cree came to Because the fur trade turned fur-bearing value guns so highly and became “so accus- animals into commodities, Aboriginal tomed to using them that they had forgotten people’s approach to the natural world how to use bows and arrows as early as 1716” changed radically as they participated in it. (Ray 1974, 72). Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 33

The purpose of hunting changed, and Increased commercial hunting and more new patterns of living replaced self-sufficient efficient weapons such as repeating rifles subsistence lifestyles. For example, before acquired from Europeans changed the cul- 1760, Aboriginal people in the West lived ture of hunting among Aboriginal people in three distinct habitats – the woodlands, and probably affected the traditional spiritual parkland borders, and the grasslands. They relationship between Aboriginal people and followed animals into the parkland in the wildlife. Whether Aboriginal people were winter and onto the grasslands in the sum- conservationists or wasteful before contact mer. Their ability to exploit all three zones is a matter of debate. Historian Shepard gave them “a great deal of ecological flex- Krech III believes Aboriginal North Amer­ ibility,” which allowed them to adjust to icans had ecological knowledge of the en- changing conditions (Ray 1996, 46). This vironment, which helped them manipulate flexibility was important because the avail- it. They expressed their kinship with other ability of resources fluctuated with periodic species through “narratives, songs, poems, outbreaks of disease and short-term changes parables, performances, rituals, and material in climate or rainfall. Hunters lost this ability objects” (Krech 1999, 211). But such know- when they ceased their seasonal food quests ledge was cultural rather than ecological in a at traditional sites and adopted the rhythms modern sense. Aboriginal peoples’ behaviour of the fur trade, which were shaped by mar- varied depending on the circumstances and ket demand for specific furs. could be either conservationist or wasteful. The fur trade companies did not, as a rule, Before contact, for instance, Plains Indians encourage Aboriginal people to practise con- were known to use only parts of the buffalo, servation of wildlife. They simply moved rather than the whole animal, if it was under­ when animals had been depleted in a region. nourished or if its flesh was dry. And buffalo The Hudson’s Bay Company even had hunt- jumps, the pre-contact practice of running ers decimate all wildlife in areas where there buffalo over cliffs, killed hundreds of animals might be competition for furs. In the North­ at a time. The fur trade, by making Aborig­ west, when wildlife populations declined, the inal people dependent on the trade, funda- company did attempt to introduce conserva- mentally altered their circumstances. tion measures for economic reasons. The policy failed, however, partly because prestige Wildlife Depletion and pensions depended on the numbers of furs officials brought in. Traders therefore The fur trade depleted North American judged their short-term interests to be more wild­life. Modern biologists, using historical important than conservation. These measures records, estimate that traders and middlemen also came too late for Aboriginal trappers. slaughtered millions of animals. The trade Some expressed concern about killing meth- put the greatest pressure on the North Amer­ ods and the scope of the hunt, but they were ican beaver, which became “prey to one of dependent on the company for food and the longest sustained hunts for a single spe- wages and often in debt to the companies. cies in world history” (Richards 2005, 467). Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 34 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

Beaver live in deciduous forests, and Canada’s HBC hired Homeguard Cree to provision forests were extensive. Estimates of the pre- its posts. These contract hunters provided contact beaver population in North America traders with moose, caribou, deer, rabbits, range from 10 to 100 million. Although and geese. Traders themselves hunted and beaver are prolific – reproducing two to five fished for wildlife to supply their posts and kits each year and taking two and a half years sustain them on journeys. The HBC’s policy to reach maturity – they are vulnerable to of self-sufficiency helped reduce its overhead hunters because they tend to stay in one costs, but it depleted species that fell outside place and do not hibernate. Hunters killed of commercial trade. For instance, it is esti- approximately 286,000 per year, and diseases mated that traders and provisioners at one (such as an epidemic in 1800 among western post could kill up to two hundred partridges beaver) killed off the remainder nearly to a day. In 1709-10, eighty company men at extinction. one post, over one winter, consumed ninety As the fur trade moved from east to west, thousand partridges, twenty-five thousand it left behind ecosystems altered beyond hares, thousands of geese, and fish and deer. recognition. Beavers, nature’s hydraulic en- These numbers seem high, but traders were gineers, create dams, ponds, meadows, and engaged in heavy work. A single man could useful ecosystems for other wildlife. Beaver consume between six and twelve pounds of dams shape environments by ensuring water meat per day, and posts often fed guests and supplies and stabilizing stream flows. When Aboriginal visitors. beaver populations declined, their dams The extermination and disappearance of broke, changing surrounding landscapes the buffalo in the United States and Canada and destroying the habitat of other wildlife remains a grim narrative in the history of species. Beaver numbers did not begin to wildlife. A number of factors contributed to rise until after the 1840s, when Europeans overhunting. Plains Indians cultures centred switched from felt to silk hats and when on the buffalo hunt, and the introduction of market demand shifted to other furs, such the horse and firearms only made the hunt as marten, fox, and muskrat. more efficient. A market for buffalo robes Provisioning the fur trade also led to the began to develop in the 1830s when other depletion of other fur-bearing animals. The fur-bearing animals had been depleted.

THE SWAN TRADE

The Hudsons Bay Company production of quill pens. annually, to the point where the did not restrict its business to Over­hunting contributed to the swan flight into James Bay had fur-bearing animals. It marketed decline of trumpeter­ and tundra almost disappeared by 1783-85 swan skins to the European gar­ swans in North America. Bet­ and swans became scarce in the ment industry and sold swan ween three thousand and five interior (Houston, Houston, and and goose feathers for the thousand swans were shot Reeves 2003, 189-98). Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 35

Buffalo hides were used for robes and as Cree chiefs asked the HBC’s chief factor, a source of leather for industrial belts. To W. J. Christie, about the Canadian gov­ acquire trade goods such as guns, Plains ernment’s intentions. The chiefs wanted to Indians hunted more buffalo. The Hudson’s know what the transfer of the HBC lands to Bay Company, which realized robes were the new nation of Canada in 1870 meant for being traded south of the border, raised their them. The numbered treaties, which were prices and actively encouraged the buffalo negotiated between 1871 and 1876, extin- robe trade to keep American traders south guished Aboriginal claims to the grasslands, of the forty-ninth parallel. Once Plains parklands, and woodlands of the Canadian Indians became enmeshed in trade, it is Prairies. Marginalized on reserves with poor estimated that they began to harvest buffalo diets, many Plains Indians died. About one- at about twice the rate they would have for sixth of the Blackfoot in Canada perished subsistence. between 1879 and 1881. Others suffered the The Metis, people of mixed European- effects of disease, displacement, and dispos- Aboriginal descent and the offspring of the session. These developments were the direct trade, were searching for a way to support result of the spatial expansion of the fur trade themselves as the fur trade dwindled. Buffalo and the depletion of animals. hunts became an important aspect of Metis social organization, identity, and lifestyle. The period of European exploration, The Metis also began to take on a middle- Aboriginal-European contact, and the man position, buying robes and meat for Columbian exchange initiated a process of pemmican from Plains Indians and selling enormous environmental and cultural change them to the HBC or American companies. that was as significant as the movement of In 1840 alone, they drove 1,210 Red River plants, wildlife, and people before the Ice carts, each loaded with a nine-hundred- Age and after its conclusion, when people pound load, to Minneapolis. started residing in North America. The en­ Overhunting by American hunters and vironment was transformed as people’s sportsmen and by Aboriginal and Metis perceptions of it changed. The fur trade hunters, combined with the US army’s policy slaughtered millions of animals and de- of exterminating buffalo to starve Plains stroyed ecosystems to line the pockets of Indians into submission, pushed buffalo to merchants and provide Europeans with the brink of extinction by the late 1870s. warm, durable, and fashionable clothing. Prior to contact, it is estimated that 60 mil- Although western European consumers lion buffalo roamed North America in two benefitted, Aboriginal peoples were left with vast herds, one northern, one southern. By little to sustain them when the trade con- 1890, there were fewer than one hundred. tracted and when political and economic With the buffalo gone, many realized that developments ushered in a new wave of the land could no longer support the Plains settlers. Indians’ traditional way of life. In 1871, Plains Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press 36 part 1: aboriginal peoples and settlers

Works Cited For Further Reading Axtell, James. 1992. Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North The Land before People America. New York: Oxford University Press. Boyd, David R. 2003. Unnatural Law: Rethinking Canadian Christianson, Gale E. 1999. Greenhouse: The 200-Year Story of Environmental Law and Policy. Vancouver: UBC Press. Global Warming. New York: Walker and Company. Cook, Ramsay. 1993. The Voyages of Jacques Cartier.Toronto: Flannery, Tim. 2001. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History University of Toronto Press. of North America and Its Peoples. London: William Crosby, Alfred W. 1994. Germs, Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Heinemann. Ecological History. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe. Hoffecker, John F., and Scott A. Elias. 2003. “Environment and Denys, Nicholas. 1908 [1672]. The Description and Natural Archeology in Beringia.” Evolutionary Anthropology 12, 1: History of the Coasts of North America (Arcadia). Translated 34-49. and edited by William F. Ganong. Toronto: Champlain Steinberg, Ted. 2002. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American Society. History. New York: Oxford University Press. Flannery, Tim. 2001. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History Weart, Spencer R. 2008. The Discovery of Global Warming. of North America and Its Peoples. London: William Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heinemann. Honour, Hugh. 1975. The New Golden Land: European Images The Arrival of Humans of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time. New Cinq-Mars, Jacques. N.d. “The Bluefish Caves.” Canadian York: Pantheon Books. Encyclo­pedia. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/. Houston, C. Stuart, Mary Houston, and Henry M. Reeves. Dixon, E. James. 2001. “Human Colonization of the Americas: 2003. “Appendix E: The Nineteenth-Century Trade in Swan Timing, Technology and Process.” Quaternary Science Skins and Quills.” In Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, and Mary Reviews 20, 1-3: 277-99. Houston, Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay, 188- Fladmark, K.R. 1979. “Routes: Alternate Migration Corridors 99. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. for Early Man in North America.” American Antiquity 44, 1: Krech, Shepard, III. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and 55-69. History. New York: W.W. Norton McMillan. Haynes, C. Vance. 1980. “The Clovis Culture.” Canadian McNeill, William Hardy. 1976. Plagues and People. Garden City, Journal of Anthropology 1, 1: 115-21. NY: Anchor. Kennett, D.J., et al. 2009. “Nanodiamonds in the Younger Miller, J.R. 1989. Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer.” Science 323, 5910: 94. Indian-White Relations in Canada. Rev. ed. Toronto: McNeill, William Hardy. 1976. Plagues and People. Garden City, University of Toronto Press. NY: Anchor. Payne, Edward John, ed. 1900. Voyages of the Elizabethan Wynn, Graeme. 2007. Canada and Arctic North America: An Seamen to America: Select Narratives from the “Principal Environmental History. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Navigations” of Hakluyt. London: Clarendon Press. Ray, Arthur. 1974. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as The Development of Cultural Areas Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Binnema, Theodore. 2004. Common and Contested Ground: Hudson’s Bay, 1660-1870. Toronto: University of Toronto A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Press. Plains. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. –. 1996. I Have Lived Here since the World Began: An Illustrated Dick, Lyle. 2009. “People and Animals in the Arctic: Mediating History of Canada’s Native Peoples. Toronto: Key Porter between Indigenous and Western Knowledge.” In Method Books. and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History, edited by Richards, John F. 2005. The Unending Frontier: An Alan MacEachern and William J. Turkel, 76-101. Toronto: Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley: Nelson. University of California Press. Evenden, Matthew. 2004. Fish versus Power: An Environmental Trigger, Bruce. 1969. The Huron Farmers of the North.Toronto: History of the Fraser River. New York: Cambridge University Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Press. Sample Material © 2012 UBC Press encountering a new land 37

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication MacDowell, Laurel Sefton An environmental history of Canada [electronic resource] / Laurel Sefton MacDowell. Includes bibliographical references and index. Electronic monograph issued in multiple formats. Also issued in print format. ISBN 978-0-7748-2103-2 (PDF). – ISBN 978-0-7748-2104-9 (EPUB) 1. Human ecology – Canada – History. 2. Natural resources – Canada – History. 3. Canada – Environmental conditions – History. 4. Environmental policy – Canada. I. Title.

GF511.M33 2012 304.20971 C2012-903171-2

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