Summary
In the summer of 1876 Commissioner Thomas Howard met at the Pas to discuss an adhesion with various Indigenous groups from the region. The Indigenous leaders present were aware that the Treaty 6 agreement had contained more benefits for Indigenous signatories and desired to create a new treaty. However, Howard assured them that this was a new unique treaty agreement despite signing them on as an adhesion to Treaty 5. Ultimately Treaty 5 provided signatories with reserves, annuities, articles for cultivation, hunting, trapping and fishing rights, amongst other promises in exchange for ceding their land rights.
Implications
Treaty 5 signatories received less favourable terms than other numbered treaties. For example, their reserves were smaller than those provided for in Treaty 3, 4 and 6. They were given only 160 acres per family of five. Robert Talbot writes in his biography of Morris, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties. that, "The situation deteriorated further when the Macdonald government, returned to power in 1878, appointed Edgar Dewdney to the newly created and all-powerful position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the North Wet Territory in 1879. With the explicit support of the Macdonal government, Dewdney abandoned the treaties and set in motion a policy that he called "sheer compulsion." He confronted an increasingly agitated Aboriginal leadership with starvation tactics, withholding rations and farm implements from those bands who protested the government's behaviour. He uncercut First Nations autonomy by incarcerating chiefs; he impoverished bands by confiscating horses and carts; he increased the size of of the Mounted police to station officers on reserves; and he prohibited people form leaving their reserves." Pg 160.
Sources
Morris, Alexander. The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North- West Territories Including the Negotiations on which they were based, and other Information relating thereto. Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1991. 143-167
