Distribution of Work Animals to Carlton Bands

Summary

Officials sent wild and unbroken Montana cattle to many reserves in the Fort Carlton area, who were not accustomed to people and were ill-suited to agricultural work. Ploughing was impossible with these animals, and many died during that winter. M.G. Dickieson contracted with S.C. Baker and Co. to provide cattle to the Fort Cartlon bands, and sought Mr. Comfort to choose the cattle, having chosen appropriate animals for other Saskatchewan-area bands the previous year. When Comfort was not able to undertake the contract, Dickieson pushed the contract through with S.C. Baker and Co. anyway, and the animals that they selected to give to the Carlton bands were largely of poor quality. There were many complaints from these bands concerning their cattle.

Implications
First Nations people were not given the proper tools to succeed in the transition from a subsistence to agricultural livelihood. The federal government had a purported goal of converting them to an agricultural way of life, but did not provide them with sufficient tools, as promised in treaties. This represented a larger pattern of government attempts to fulfill their legal treaty obligations as minimally as possible, as indicated in other database entries.
Sources

Vankoughnet to Macdonald, January 17, 1879 [NA, RG 10, vol. 3665, file 10,094]

Date
1878-00-00