Creation of Indian Reserves on the Canadian Prairies, 1870-1885

From the Author's Abstract: "In 1871 the Canadian government began a program to settle Indians on reserves so that the Indians would not interfere with the spread of agricultural settlement across the prairies. The government signed treaties, surveyed reserves, and encouraged the Indians to adopt farming by providing agricultural instruction. The Indian, bedeviled by alcoholism, smallpox epidemics, disappearance of the bison, and subsequent famine, had no alternative but to accept that program. Government policy during the first fifteen years set the pattern for the segregation of prairie Indians from Canadian society, despite government rhetoric that promised to assimilate the Indian in Canadian life."