Negotiating the Numbered Treaties

Download or read book Negotiating the Numbered Treaties written by Robert Talbot and published by Purich Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Morris, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the North West Territories in the 1870s, was the main negotiator of many of the numbered treaties on the prairies and has often been portrayed as a parsimonious agent of the government, bent on taking advantage of First Nations chiefs and councillors. However, author Robert J. Talbot reveals Morris as a man deeply sympathetic to the challenges faced by Canada's Indigenous peoples as they sought to secure their future in the face of encroaching settlement and the disappearance of the buffalo. Both Morris and the First Nations negotiators viewed the treaties as the basis of a new, reciprocal arrangement, but by the end of his appointment, Morris was seriously at odds with a federal administration that preferred inaction over honouring its treaty promises.