CHAPTER THREE “a splendid spirit of cooperation”¹ Churches, Police Forces, and the Department of Indian Affairs

Missionary Surveillance and Surveillance of Missionaries

Protestants and Catholics watched each other carefully and jealously guarded any advances they made into First Nations communities.⁵ This jealousy extended not only to the building of churches and schools, but also to the provision of on-reserve health services.⁶ The Calgary Herald declared, “something should be done to prevent the agents of the denominations from interfering with each other’s labors” in “their efforts to elevate the Indians of the North West in the scale of civilization.”⁷ DSGIA Frank Pedley wrote of the three Protestant denominations “[t]he department is often perplexed by the conflicting claims and demands which seem sometimes to be made in the interests of special missions rather than the interests of Indian advancement.”⁸ The DIA monitored all missionary activity on reserves and in Indian schools and each year published information on these activities in its Annual Reports. At the same time, missionaries observed the activities of the department’s employees and did not hesitate to articulate their concerns when they believed their interests in relation to other denominations were in jeopardy⁹ or when they felt their moral influence and example were compromised by the department or one of its employees.¹⁰ Occasionally, to the dismay and indignation of the DIA, church representatives went to the media and allowed their criticisms to enter the public’s field of view.¹¹

On occasion, the mutual observation of representatives of a church and employees of the DIA, and perceived affronts to one or the other’s interests, character, or mission, resulted in undisguised animosity. In 1892, DIA farmer P.L. Grasse complained that Methodist missionary John McDougall was in the words of another agent, S.B. Lucas, “doing all he can to turn the Indians Against him [Grasse].”¹² In 1894, McDougall felt wronged over the refusal of the Nakoda to lease some reserve land to him for grazing purposes and blamed the influence of Grasse for their refusal: “I am sorry that a man who has never done nor yet has the will or capacity to do even the one thousandth part of what I have done for both Department and Indians should be able because for the time being he has the ration house + Gov. patronage to help him make it possible for the Department to misunderstand the case as it affects both the Indians + myself.”¹³ In 1896, Grasse accused McDougall, in addition to other irregularities, of selling defective beef to the Nakoda and to the local orphanage. McDougall, in turn, accused Grasse of being “a drunkard, and a gambler, and a blasphemer, and at times foul and brutish in his conduct.”¹⁴ By the end of the year Grasse was transferred to the Crooked Lake reserve “to further the interests of the public service.”¹⁵ Within six months of the transfer he was no longer employed by the DIA. In contrast, McDougall’s descendants ended up with some of the best agricultural lands in Nakoda territory and McDougall himself would in the years to come be sent to British Columbia in the employ the DIA to determine what lands could be removed from reserves there.

Despite local conflicts, it is clear that the department at Ottawa went to some length to maintain friendly relations with all denominations and to protect its public image of religious equality. The glowing report of Frederick Abbott, Secretary to the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners, attests to the success of the department’s public relations efforts when the author wrote that a “splendid spirit of cooperation exists between the various religious denominations in Canada and the government.”¹⁶ The churches too, went some way to maintaining good relations with Ottawa so that, for example, when Anglican missionary A.E. O’Meara, a vocal advocate for Indigenous rights, was critical of the DIA’s inability to fulfill its written promises and objectives and publicly labeled “one of its officers a liar…he was called to order very strongly by the Primate” of the Anglican Church.¹⁷

In addition to the DIA, the police too, particularly the NWMP, were interested in the activities of various churches, especially if they believed that public peace was in jeopardy. When, for example, the Siksika voiced their dissatisfaction regarding compulsory attendance at the school on their reserve, Anglican missionary J.W. Tims recommended “a force of 200 or more men located on the border of the Reserve as a check to their present behaviour.”¹⁸ It is unlikely that such a large proportion of the force would ever be committed to such an assignment, but soon it was not necessary. A week later NWMP Commissioner Herchmer was able to report that the “departure of Rev Tims has removed all cause of complaint and Indians are now perfectly quiet.”¹⁹ The same year, when NWMP Superintendent S.B. Steele found that children at the school at St. Paul’s Mission on the Kainai reserve were being locked in at night, he warned the priest/principal that if lives were lost in the event of a fire, he would be tried for manslaughter.²⁰

Mormons too came under the scrutinizing eye of the police. As Superintendent Steele reported, “as usual I have caused a close watch to be kept upon the ‘Latter Day Saints’ for the purpose of observing whether the practice above mentioned [polygamy] exists amongst them and have caused Inspector Davidson to furnish me with all the information necessary.”²¹ In this case, the investigating officer reported that he was convinced that no polygamy was being practiced, “I think that they now stand in too wholesome an awe of Canadian Laws and of the Mounted police to attempt any such serious offence.”²² Polygamy was of special concern to many Canadian officials since, to them, it aptly illustrated the backwardness of Indigenous societies and so required eradication if plains First Nations were to advance.²³

There was sectarian discord, differences in opinion regarding tactics within various denominations, and disputes between individual missionaries and police, and missionaries and DIA employees. There were few in either region, though, who presented any serious challenge to what was believed to be the natural correctness of individual land tenure and property ownership, to the belief that Indigenous people were not yet advanced enough to be permitted to reap any benefits liberalism had to offer, or that adherence to Christianity was a necessary prerequisite not only for civilization but for human development. Further, missionaries were employed by government officials to pacify Indigenous residents. For example, in preparation for the arrival of NWM Policemen and American troops into their territories to mark off the boundary between the United States and Canada, missionary John McDougall was sent to the Blackfoot to advise them of “the good will of the Queen” and to ask them “to regard the Force with a friendly eye.”²⁴ On a larger scale, adherence to Christianity seems to have gone some way toward the DIA objective of fostering quietude. As Chief at Cayuse Creek, a Lil’wat community, reported to missionary and DIA employee McDougall in 1910:

We never leased land. We never gave away our right to game and salmon. They, the white men took it from us. We did not get mad. The white people did all this. We did not get mad. No–Christ said ‘do not get mad.’²⁵

Police Surveillance

Though there were other police and investigative bodies involved with law enforcement in western Canada, these duties fell mainly to the NWMP east of the Rockies, and to the British Columbia Provincial Police (BCPP) to the west. Like the representatives of the various churches, the BCPP and the NWMP observed the movements and activities of First Nations peoples within their jurisdictions.

The BCPP formed in 1858, sixteen years before the NWMP, was the first territorial police force in Canada. While the immediate impetus for the creation of the force was the need to control the tens of thousands of gold seekers that arrived in the Fraser River watershed in 1858, it had a myriad of law enforcement duties during its existence.²⁶ That the British Columbia police were primarily responsible for ensuring the orderly development of liberal capitalism is evident from the particular attention it paid to working class people, especially union organizers and the unemployed.²⁷ Undoubtedly, the increased surveillance of these individuals is a direct result of the demands of settlers, businessmen, and their political representatives for increased policing.

The provincial government felt that since “Indians” were a federal responsibility the cost of their surveillance should be borne by the government at Ottawa. Nevertheless, the BCPP continued to keep a watch on Indigenous people.²⁸ Indeed, the 1901 diary of a constable stationed in the southern Okanagan includes such regular entries as: “watched actions of party of half breeds,” “large gathering of Indians on reserve,” and “patrolled reserve all day.”²⁹ Similarly, ten years later, the constable in the district visited at least some reserves once a week.³⁰ The BCPP was also active in locating and returning truant students to boarding schools for Indigenous children including the Kamloops Indian Residential School.³¹

Since 1900 at least, DIA requested that the BCPP not issue game licenses to anyone “convicted of an infraction of the Indian Act” in the past year.³² In 1918, the duties of the game department were combined with those of the provincial police and “the Superintendent of Provincial Police was created ex-officio the Provincial Game Warden.”³³ The same year the Game Act created the Game Conservation Board, which believed its most difficult problem was the “wanton destruction of game by the Indians.”³⁴ While the BCPP was already involved in administering related regulations, this transfer of administrative control and personnel into the police force, and the extension of direct responsibility for these issues brought the force into more direct contact with Indigenous groups at a time when they were increasingly pressing for control of game resources.

Job actions by Indigenous people, in concert with White workers, also brought them more directly under the supervisory gaze of lawmakers and police in the early twentieth century. The Fraser River fishery strikes of 1900 and 1901 are cases in point. As was reported to the Attorney General “over forty white and [I]ndian patrol boats, manned by ten men each now on the river intimidating destroying property and preventing fishing.”³⁵ Here, as in the province’s coal mines, Asian workers were co-opted into acting as strike breakers. This strategy, coupled with the declaration of martial law and the employment of special constables, militia men, and the BCPP to protect the Japanese fishers and so the interests of the cannery owners, ultimately defeated the action taken by striking Indigenous and White fishers.

It was not only overt resistance, however, that caused Indigenous people to be singled out as the primary reason for requesting additional policing. As one settler argued:

[m]y contention in this matter is, that the Govt.—in localities like this where the halfbreed element and Siwash element so largely prevail—should consider itself bound to see that the whites who keep up the country with their enterprise and taxes are allowed to live in comparative comfort and freedom from annoyance.³⁶

Another wrote to his M.P.P. that

the residents of this District between Nicola and Princeton are very much bothered by drunken Indians and tramps so much so that it is unsafe for women and children to be on the road unattended. The trouble is becoming so serious that we fear that some outrage may be perpetrated if steps are not taken to have the district policed.³⁷

For a short time, there was also a provincial police force in Alberta. When the RNWMP, apparently unwilling to enforce provincial prohibition regulations, cancelled its contract with the Province in 1916, Alberta established its own provincial police which operated until the RCMP reassumed policing responsibilities in 1932. While there was some surveillance of the First Nations of southern Alberta by the Alberta Provincial Police, the continued responsibility of the Mounties for matters concerning Indigenous people insured that these activities were even less substantial than those of the provincial police in British Columbia.³⁸

Unlike the APP or even the BCPP, the extensive body of literature on the NWMP and its successors has encouraged its promotion to mythic status.³⁹ The Calgary Herald, for example, referred to the force in 1924 as “one of the romantic institutions of the British Empire.”⁴⁰ The standard interpretation in many ways parallels the presentation of the history of Canada as the peaceful transformation of an untamed and unpopulated wilderness. For example, at the end of his two-volume study of the mounted police, John P. Turner stated that the force “established law where no law existed, spoke order into existence wherever order was threatened and laid broad and deep the foundations of peace and prosperity in the wide reaches of the Western country.”⁴¹ These and allied positions both nourish and are sustained by Canada’s national mythology surrounding the Mounted police. Further, it has also been suggested that the paucity of White settlers goes some way to explain the lack of criticism of the force in its first years of operation. More importantly, as Sarah Carter has argued, the small number of NWMP could never have facilitated this peaceful occupation if it were not for the “strategies and actions of the Aboriginal residents.”⁴²

John A. Macdonald began preparing the ground for the formation of a mounted police force as the situation in the prairie west began to deteriorate in 1869, partly as a result of the lack of consultation with First Nations and Métis inhabitants regarding the transfer of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada. The force began to take shape with an order-incouncil in April 1870 in which provision was made for a mounted force which, like the Royal Irish Constabulary, would be under the central control of Ottawa and not territorial or regional governments.⁴³ While the resistance centred at Red River was over in 1870, the desire to establish Canadian authority over the west remained. In September of 1873, nine commissioned officers were appointed to a “Mounted Police Force for the North-West Territories” and by November 3^rd a further 150 men were recruited to the force.⁴⁴ In 1874, 300 Mounties marched west and arrived in the area that became southern Alberta to establish Fort Macleod in 1874 and Fort Calgary in 1875. The conspicuous expansion of Anglo Canadian liberal values in this region and the formal surveillance network in preparation for the western settlement was initiated in advance of any treaty or agreement with resident First Nations.

The NWMP were an essential part of Macdonald’s national policies.⁴⁵ In turn, the success of the national policies took precedence over not only treaty promises but also the basic human rights of Indigenous people.⁴⁶ The primary role of the Mounted police was to facilitate the peaceful occupation of the west by Anglo-Canadians and to allay their fears of Indigenous people once they arrived. Without farmer-settlers both the railway and the NWMP themselves would be redundant.⁴⁷ A.A. Dorian stated in 1874 that the Mounties’ mission was, in part: “to give confidence to peaceable Indians and intending settlers.”⁴⁸ Macdonald himself confirmed a decade later “the business of the Mounted Police is principally to keep peace between white-men + Indians.”⁴⁹ As themselves largely the products of privileged English or Anglo-Canadian society, officers of the NWMP were fitting apostles of the class and racial hierarchies existent in their home territories.⁵⁰

Even more than the BCPP, the NWMP and its successors were required to fulfill a host of enforcement responsibilities at different times: from the Leprosy Act to the Explosives Act and from the Bank Act to the Canada Temperance Act.⁵¹ The Mounted police also, of course, enforced the Indian Act and other pieces of legislation both on and off the reserves. Further, despite the extent of the panoptic machinery that the DIA had in place, the NWMP and its successors provided them with a myriad of services.⁵² They were a major force in laying the ground work for the acceptance of Treaty 7 and were a presence, along with their cannon, at the negotiations for the treaty.⁵³ In the years that followed they also provided an escort for the annuity money guaranteed in 1877.⁵⁴ The mounted police could be called in at short notice at the request of the department to enhance its capacity in the case of a perceived threat. As occurred at the signing of the treaty, and as will be discussed below, the mounted police, by patrolling or merely by being visibly present, provided a show of force that could be very persuasive in “encouraging” Indigenous people to meet their will and that of the DIA.

The NWMP was, however, clearly interested in “keeping track” of Indigenous people for their own reasons and was not satisfied acting simply as a coercive or an additional observatory arm of the DIA. In 1892, for example, NWMP Comptroller White suggested that it would be most helpful if “Indian Agents would, as far as possible, notify the nearest Police detachments when parties of Indians leave their Reserves, intimating at the same time the number of Indians and the object of which, or the destination to which, they are traveling.”⁵⁵ Though DSGIA Lawrence Vankoughnet had no objection to the idea, Indian Commissioner Reed thought the proposal would prove too expensive.⁵⁶ To this White argued “there are hundreds of able bodied Indians and Indian ponies on a Reserve such as Treaty No 7, who are drawing Government rations” so there should not be too much trouble in locating one who would do the work “and such employment would be a step in the direction of educating the Indian for general patrol work.”⁵⁷

The relationship between the police and the DIA, both institutionally and at the local individual level, was not always smooth, but both agencies had the same long-term objectives. Both were primarily interested in paving the way for non- Indigenous settlement and advancing Anglo-Canadian cultural and economic interests. Neither believed it necessary, or even feasible, to extend the rights and freedoms apparently guaranteed by liberalism to Indigenous people.

The Pass System

The restriction on the right of Indigenous people to travel freely provides perhaps the clearest illustration of the operation of exclusionary liberalism in western Canada. This restriction is best seen as a matrix of laws, regulations, and policy meant to “elevate” Indigenous people while simultaneously securing the interests of non-Indigenous newcomers. Like colonialism itself, this restrictive complex was creative and adaptable and so could adjust as political, economic, or social conditions changed. The most notorious element of this network was the “pass system,” a DIA policy that had no legal basis, but nonetheless required reserve residents to secure a pass from their Indian agent before leaving their reserve for any reason.

In 1877, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, one of a three person commission investigating reserves in British Columbia, wrote that he had traveled widely in the United States and while he found that the government there expended considerable sums of money, exhibited “benevolent intentions,” that “many, very many of the [Indian] agents were good men,” and that the lands reserved were “more than amply sufficient for all the material wants of the Indians for generations to come,” he was perplexed that all of this “should bear such unpleasant fruit in the shape of recurring Indian outbreaks.” The problem, he concluded, was that “the restriction on what may be called the natural freedom of man as regards locomotion must be a constant source of dissatisfaction to those Indians in the US who are confined on reservations…” In Canada, on the other hand, Indians

are constantly on the move; they gallop about to pay visits to their brethren; they fish and shoot where the please; they take work here and there…Any attempt to restrain that natural human right of locomotion would be attended with great danger, and I must think that its enforcement is one of the chief sources of danger in the reservation system.⁵⁸

Nevertheless, in less than a decade, the restriction of this “natural freedom” of movement is precisely the tactic adopted by the Canadian Government in western Canada. While in the period under discussion here this restriction was more far-reaching and overtly coercive in the prairie west, it was pursued in British Columbia as well.

While I would argue that the ways in which such a policy as the restriction of Indigenous movement could be legitimized and favoured so broadly within settler society and even perceived as benevolent is more important than who originated the idea, the debate concerning the genesis of the pass system does provide some interesting points of discussion.

The restriction of Indigenous movement seems to have originated with a NWMP concern regarding the potential consequences of cross border movement by Canadian Indigenous people to hunt buffalo and steal horses. In the late 1870s, the NWMP was concerned primarily with proving they were able to exercise authority over Canadian territory and especially over Indigenous people. The worry was that Canada might provide a staging area for military action against the U.S. army, which could then result in a U.S. military incursion into Canadian territory in retribution. Brian Hubner confirms that the NWMP built forts Walsh and Macleod to this end.⁵⁹ By 1882, correspondence between the U.S. and Canada led to the passage of an Order in Council in April by which Canada would propose to the U.S. “that individual permits be granted by the authorities of both nations to their respective Indians who may wish to cross the border.”⁶⁰

In 1882 as well, NWMP Commissioner Irvine specifically recommended that Indian agents be vigilant in preventing large groups from leaving their reserves.⁶¹ In November 1883, DSGIA Vankoughnet wrote to Macdonald to express his concern about Indigenous women camped near towns in the North-West and suggested that the problem could be rectified “in a very simple manner by the Mounted Police…requiring that the owner of any tepee produce a permit from the local Indian agent for his or her having the tepee at that point.”⁶² Macdonald agreed that the presence of women, especially near settler towns and villages, needed to be restricted. In his annual report for that year Macdonald offered the opinion that the location of the Tsuu T’ina so close to Calgary “operates detrimentally, to their improvement” and causes “demoralization of their women.” In view of formulating a strategy “for checking this evil” Macdonald ordered the establishment of a dialogue between the Indian Commissioner for the North-West Territories and the Commissioner of the NWMP “with a view to the adoption of some plan to prevent the indiscriminate camping of Indians in the vicinity of towns and white settlements in the North-West Territories…”⁶³ Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney sent a copy of Vankoughnet’s memo to Irvine and stated that “there should be no difficulty” under the Vagrant Act in removing those camped without passes.⁶⁴

In May 1884, NWMP Inspector Samuel B. Steele, acknowledged Commissioner Irvine’s request that Indigenous people camped near Calgary be returned to their reserves. Steele reported that he had already begun to do this and stated that he had “made arrangements with the Indian Agent that no Indians are to be allowed to stay here without a permit from him [the agent], these permits to be granted sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.”⁶⁵ Two weeks later NWMP Controller Fred White reported to Irvine that Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Macdonald “desires that instructions be given to the Officers of the Mounted Police to remove the Indians frequenting Towns & Villages in the N.W. Territories for improper purposes. The Minister however wishes the Officer in command at each Post to be given discretionary power in each case as to removal.” White wrote further that “[i]t is not deemed desirable to adopt the permit system which was suggested in previous correspondence on this subject.”⁶⁶ White, then, was not suggesting that the police challenge the passes that had no basis in law, only that Macdonald wanted to leave the removal of Indigenous people up to the discretion of individual officers and not to apply a universal policy at this point.

In his annual report for 1884 Irvine argued against the general suggestion that Indigenous people without passes be confined to their reserves since “the introduction of such a system would be tantamount to a breach of confidence with the Indians generally.” Irvine went on to say that the agreement that they be allowed to travel freely largely contributed to the satisfactory conclusion of the treaty with the Blackfeet.”⁶⁷ Still, the commissioner was not opposed to restricting Indigenous movement, in contradiction to treaty promises, he simply thought it “wise and sound” “that discretionary power, according to circumstances, should be vested in the officers of the police,” as Macdonald and White had previously instructed.⁶⁸ Throughout this period, the NWMP continued to use a broad interpretation of the Vagrant Act to limit Indigenous people to their reserves.⁶⁹

The correspondence of the early 1880s indicates that there was desire and action at all levels of both the DIA and NWMP hierarchies to restrict Indigenous movement prior to 1885, but that a universally applied pass system as such did not yet have official approval. In 1885, though, “the [North West] Rebellion brought the pass system to life with a jolt.”⁷⁰

In May 1885, Major-General Frederick Middleton asked Dewdney “[w]ould it not be advisable to issue proclamation warning breeds and Indians to return to their Reserves and that all those found away will be treated a rebels. I suppose such a proclamation would be disseminated without difficulty.” Dewdney responded immediately that he had “issued a notice advising Indians to stay on Reserves and warning them of risks they run in being found off them but have no power to issue proclamation as you suggest.”⁷¹ The notice warned “all good and loyal Indians should remain quietly on their Reserves where they will be perfectly safe and receive the protection of the soldiers and that any Indian being off his Reserve without special permission in writing from some authorized person, is liable to be arrested on suspicion of being a rebel, and punished as such.”⁷²

By June, with the resistance mostly subdued, Dewdney wrote of the futility of attempting to restrict Indians to reserves “when, if they do leave them, there is no law by which they can be punished and our orders enforced.”⁷³ This does not necessarily mean that he was opposed to restricting Indigenous movement, only that, in his opinion, without supporting legislation, the pass system was inoperable. The Indian Commissioner then turned to his assistant, Hayter Reed, and requested that he put into writing some suggestions regarding “the future management of the Indians in the North West Territories.”⁷⁴

Following the instructions of his superior, and as Dewdney confirmed “only after careful consultation between myself and my assistant,” Reed made fifteen proposals. Of special interest here is Reed’s seventh recommendation that “no rebel Indian should be allowed off the Reserves without a pass signed by an I.D. [Indian Department] official.”⁷⁵ Significantly, Reed’s suggestions were amplified as they moved up the DIA hierarchy. Indian Commissioner Dewdney, supported Reed’s recommendation and suggested that “another year” legislation might be enacted in support.⁷⁶ DSGIA Vankoughnet agreed as well, but argued that not only those involved in the “Rebellion but all our Indians should be required” to carry passes. John A. Macdonald supported the implementation of such a system even as he recognized it could not be legally enforced.

The system should be introduced in the Loyal Bands as well & the advantage of the change pressed upon them. But no punishment for breaking bounds could be inflicted & in case of resistance on the grounds of Treaty rights should not be insisted on.⁷⁷

Apparently encouraged by Dewdney’s support, if not yet Macdonald’s, Reed reported from Battleford in August, “I am adopting the system of keeping the Indians on their respective Reserves + not allowing any leave them without passes – I know this is hardly supportable by any legal enactment but one must do many things which can only be supported by common sense and by what may be for the general good – I get the Police to send out daily and send any Indians without passes back to their Reserves.” Reed complained though “unless one is at their heels Police duties here are done in a half hearted manner.”⁷⁸ A few days later Dewdney presented his views on restriction of movement, if not the pass system specifically, when he wrote to W. De Balinhard, new agent for the Tsuu T’ina and Nakoda and stated that “[s]trict measures must be taken to keep Indians at home, and to prevent them from visiting Calgary or elsewhere for immoral or other purposes.”⁷⁹

In June of 1886 Dewdney was sent “a form of pass proposed to be given to Indians when allowed to absent themselves from their Reserves” and in September he was sent the fifty books of passes that he had apparently requested. The following month Reed sent out the books of passes to Indian agents and the pass system was officially launched.⁸⁰ Throughout the remainder of the 1880s the DIA and NWMP generally cooperated to apply the policy in the Treaty 7 area as they did in the prairie west to the east despite the fact that no Treaty 7 First Nation participated in the events of 1885. Agent Pocklington reported for example that the Kainai “kept wonderfully quiet.”⁸¹ Still, NWMP Superintendent Antrobus reported from Calgary that “more strenuous efforts” by DIA officials were required “to keep the Indians on their respective reserves.”⁸²

Already, though, the contradictions between the desire of the NWMP to restrict Indigenous movement and the lack of legal foundation for action in this regard began to surface. Superintendent W.M. Herchmer was clearly aggravated by the presence of “34 lodges” camped at Calgary in June 1887, stating “[t]he only way to get rid of the Indians is to arrest those not working as vagrants, an example made would frighten the others.” Herchmer noted that it had “been the custom not to allow them to remain in numbers” but his understanding from communication with the NWMP Commissioner, his brother L.W. Herchmer, was “that we had no right to turn them away…”⁸³

By 1888 though, Commissioner Herchmer seems to have changed his view and complained about “Western Agents issuing passes to Headmen for them following and not to the individual Indians” and also recommended “closer supervision on the part of Agents in Treaty 7 especially over the issue of passes…” He confirmed further that if the department would issue “stringent rules” regarding leaving reserves the police were “now in a position to rigidly enforce them.”⁸⁴ A future commissioner of the force, J.H. McIllree, also issued complaints in 1888 concerning the free way in which Sarcee Agent Cornish issued passes. Since this was “a constant source of annoyance to the settlers,” McIllree ordered one of his officers “to send them to their reserve, pass or no pass.”⁸⁵

The following year Herchmer focused his frustration more directly on the Kainai and their Indian Agent William Pocklington, who “took the part of his Indians” rather than cooperating with the police in legal matters.⁸⁶ Pocklington on the other hand reported that the Kainai were aware that there was no law confining them to their reserve and “although the form of granting passes is adhered to as much as possible, that they have the right to go and come as they please.”⁸⁷

In 1890, the DIA acquiesced to NWMP requests to make the pass system more restrictive. Vankoughnet assured NWMP Comptroller White that agents would be told to issue passes only to those who convinced the agent that the reason for requesting leave was “a legitimate one.”⁸⁸ He pledged further that Kainai Agent Pocklington would be instructed to withhold passes from anyone who was previously found using alcohol when away from the reserve.⁸⁹ The NWMP were particularly concerned about the Kainai, who Superintendent Deane admitted the police were unsuccessful in restricting to their reserve. According to Deane “[t]he Bloods think that they are the cream of creation, and it is time for them to begin to imbibe some modification of the idea.”⁹⁰

During this period, Superintendent S.B. Steele wrote of making “arrests at the Pistol’s point” while patrolling the borders of reserves in his Macleod District and stated that “all Indians visiting the town of Macleod are required to have passes from their agents, failing which they are ordered back to their reserve.”⁹¹ In June 1890, he wrote that “[t]he Indians this month as usual have required most careful watching, especially the Bloods, who are trucu-lent and mischievous and constantly giving trouble.” When he also reported that ranchers in southern Alberta were united in their desire “to have Indians confined to their reserves,” Dewdney, now DSGIA, wrote to Indian Commissioner Reed on instructions from Macdonald regarding “measures to keep our Indians upon their reserve.” Reed reiterated the difficulties of treaty promises regarding freedom of movement presented and suggested that a troop of Indians under the command of a NWMP officer might be successful in helping, among other things, “keep Indians upon their Reserves.”⁹²

In contrast to his views of the Kainai, Steele wrote “The North Peigans are the best behaved Indians I have anything to do with.”⁹³ North Axe, who resided on the Piikani reserve was reported by Superintendent Neale to have said to him “[s]ince you came here the Indians are afraid to go off their Reserves, before you came they went where they liked.”⁹⁴ A few years later, though, Steele complained that while Peigan Agent Springett provided all with passes, Agent Pocklington refused passes to the Kainai in order to keep them from leaving their reserve. Steele doubted that “such coercive measures as stopping their rations or refusing a pass” would be successful. Even though Agent Pocklington seemed to be following the orders of his superiors and the requests of the NWMP to more strictly contain the Kainai, in Steele’s view only the coercive power of the mounted police, it seemed, could be successful in this regard. The problem identified here by Steele, though, was that while there was a standing order to return all those without passes to their reserves, too few policemen spoke enough Blackfoot to make their demands understood.⁹⁵ This exchange seems to indicate that into the early 1890s at least the police were only uneasy about the pass system in that they, despite their willingness and effort, were incapable of enforcing it to the degree they wished. Reed supported both the non-issuance of passes by Pocklington and their distribution by Springett since “it is better to know who are going, where to and so forth.” The issuance of passes in this way also provided the DIA with the appearance of authority, provided of course that the lack of legal basis could be hidden from Indigenous people.⁹⁶

As stated at the beginning of this section, the pass system was part of a coercive and flexible matrix meant to restrict Indigenous movement in the interests of White settlers and it must be seen in that light. It took time for the pass system to find its place within this network and within the larger complex of exclusionary liberalism. Even though Canada never had the capacity to forcibly restrict all off-reserve movement, the will of both the police and the DIA to do what they could in this regard is evident, even if some in the upper echelons of the former were sometimes uncomfortable. As will be shown below, there were cases of Indigenous people forcibly returned to their reserve, but even when passes were used solely as instruments of surveillance or as demonstrations of state control, they remained bereft of any legal justification. Both the DIA and the mounted police wanted to be seen as responding to settler fears, first of the military threat, and later the annoyance, posed by Indigenous people.

There is evidence of Indigenous people resisting the imposition of the pass system and leaving their reserves without passes in the 1890s, but there is also evidence of both police “escorting” them back and of other coercive measures being applied to restrict their movement. In May 1892, Tsuu T’ina Agent Samuel Lucas wrote in his journal that “[q]uite a number of Indians left they say for the Peigan reserve, they did ask leave or get passes, police turned them back.” A week later he reported that “[t]he Indians, who had left for the Peigan Agency all came in with the Police.”⁹⁷ Still, some of the Tsuu T’ina at least seem to have thought they could turn to the police for remedial action even though in this case and in many others the police deferred to the local Indian agent. As Lucas confirmed in his journal on June 6^th “all went in to see the Police asking for leave to go to the Peigans & complaining about me. The [NWMP] Inspector sent word to me & asked what I wanted to do with them. I asked him to send them home & he did so. They then came to me for leave to go & make their visit.”⁹⁸ Indeed, the NWMP’s Inspector Cuthbert reported “Sarcee Indians (a party of 150) have been escorted back to their reserve” and that the NWMP patrol remained on the reserve. Cuth-bert complained that the agent was not firm enough so that “it is natural they should be troublesome.”⁹⁹ Indian Commissioner Reed himself authorized passes after the Tsuu T’ina had completed their spring farm work.¹⁰⁰

This incident demonstrates exclusionary liberalism in operation. It also shows that at least some in the NWMP were more vehement in their desire to restrict Indigenous movement than the DIA regardless of the lack of legal foundation for such action. Finally, it reveals that the mythology surrounding the mounted police as a benevolent organization rather than one that had just participated in a clearly illegal act was already established. A Calgary Herald article on this incident demonstrates the role played by the popular press in justifying and promulgating all of this: “the party extended over a distance of about two miles…Altogether it was a picturesque and funny sight” that was “apparently much enjoyed by the good natured police who always treat the Indians with kindly forbearance.”¹⁰¹

Following this event, NWMP Commissioner Herchmer admitted that he “was always aware that it was not legal” to force Indians without passes to return to their reserves, and was concerned about the his own responsibility in taking actions to this end especially if there was resistance and things were to “get ugly.” He was particularly worried that the NWMP might be requested to return large bodies of Siksika or Kainai to their reserves. Finally, he complained that the DIA was not doing enough to share in the responsibility in this regard: “Reed himself will not help me to do his own business.” Herchmer appeared much less concerned with the actual illegality of these actions than he was that he “would finally get into trouble.”¹⁰² For his part, Reed too recognized the lack of legal basis for insisting on passes and, according to Comptroller White, recommended that the NWMP “should not stand too literally upon the extent of their powers in dealing with Indians… but should they find that their numbers are not enough to present such show of force as will overawe and prevent danger of resistance, they should govern themselves accordingly.”¹⁰³ The police thought the DIA should “notify the nearest Police detachments when parties of Indians leave the Reserves.” On the other hand, officials of the DIA thought the “Police should make a practice of calling at the Agencies with such regularity and frequency as to insure their being kept posted about movements of Indians.”¹⁰⁴

The Tsuu T’ina and others in the Treaty 7 area clearly resisted the imposition of restriction on their movements, but this can not be seen as a collapse of the system, rather it demonstrates how the system could adapt to meet new challenges. Agent Lucas continued to report that the Tsuu T’ina asked for and received passes to leave their reserve to pick berries or go hunting, to cut wood, to travel to another reserve, or to go to Calgary to purchase goods, among other reasons.¹⁰⁵ Lucas also reported that he withheld foodstuffs, referred to as “rations” by both the NWMP and the DIA, from those who left without leave, a position that seems to fit with Comptroller White’s recommendation above and also met with the approval of senior DIA administration. Sometimes an agent would ask a colleague on another reserve to restrict rations to force reserve residents to return home. Even though there was a concern that rations were being drawn for absent community members by their families, the strategy of selectively providing foodstuffs was generally followed into the twentieth century.¹⁰⁶

The conflict between the NWMP and the DIA came to a head in 1893. Reed reported that, without any advance warning, the NWMP had decided to no longer “order or take any Indians back to their Reserves, but will merely ask them to return.” While Superintendent Steele was convinced that he could persuade them without actually ordering them back, a fine distinction to be sure, Reed worried that what he perceived as a lack of resolute action would lead to conflict between ranchers and Indigenous people, difficulty in enforcing game laws, and a backward step for the department’s reserve agricultural pursuits. At the same time, the Calgary Rod and Gun Club complained that game laws were ineffective deterrents to hunting by Indigenous people and that this state of affairs worked to the detriment of non-Indigenous sportsmen. When the club forwarded a petition to the DIA, requesting that Indians be “strictly confined to their several reservations during the breeding season” to in their view make the situation more equitable for non-Indigenous hunters, it contained the signatures of NWMP Superintendent E.W. Jarvis and Assistant Commissioner J.H. McIllree.

Comptroller White, too, reiterated the concern about the freedom of movement guaranteed under the treaty and turned the onus back on the DIA recommending that agents could issue an “order of return” which would include a warning that “privileges allowed them under, or in excess of, their Treaty rights” would be revoked.¹⁰⁷ There was still no legal basis for White’s recommendation, but it would serve to protect the NWMP.

Both the NWMP and the DIA wanted to restrict Indigenous people to their reserves in the interest of non-Indigenous settlers and like the parent of two squabbling children, neither of whom wanted to accept responsibility, the Minister of the Interior grew frustrated over the conflict between the two agencies. Thomas Mayne Daly wrote “I may say that I fail to understand why a settlement of this matter could not have been had long ago & a satisfactory understanding arrived at. I am of opinion that under Treaty 7 we have all the power we want…” Daly cited the passage of the treaty that guaranteed the right to travel, but then emphasized the adjacent section “subject to such regulations as may from time to time be made by the Gov’t of the country… Now all in my opinion what is required to settle this difficulty is for us to pass such regulations as we think necessary under this clause of the treaty…to expedite matters I yesterday wired Mr. Reed to frame such regulations as he thought were required & send to this Dept for approval.”¹⁰⁸ So Reed seems to have been given carte blanche by a cabinet minister to frame legislation along the lines discussed more than a decade earlier. Why no legislation was passed is unclear from the existent record, but that a cabinet minister would seek resolution by simply changing the law to exclude Indigenous people from the rights afforded to others in Canada is telling.

Certainly Indigenous people in Treaty 7 continued to resist their restriction to reserves. They seem to have made little distinction between being “persuaded” and being returned by force. They chose to resist or consent according to their own judgment of the specific situation and as conditions allowed.¹⁰⁹ If they left without leave from their agent, the NWMP continued, as Commissioner Herchmer’s 1896 circular confirms, to “use all possible pressure to persuade them to return.” Unfortunately, from the existing textual record it is also difficult to determine how close “persuasion” came to intimidation or coercion. While the police convinced themselves that this activity was within the letter of the law, for twenty-first century investigators it remains as further evidence of the flexibility, though still exclusive nature, of Canadian liberalism as it was applied to Indigenous people. In addition to the NWMP, agents also worked together during this period and later to keep Indigenous people on their home reserves and away from neighbouring ones both in Canada and in the United States. To this end, they also used their authority over reserve communities to enforce trespass legislation within them.¹¹⁰

In 1896, NWMP Superintendent A. Bowen Perry reported that “[t]he Indian Commissioner agrees with us that we should not exceed our legal powers in attempting to keep Indians on their reserves, but only a few months earlier the police had requested that the DIA restrict the issuance of passes during the spring and early summer and the DIA agreed. Other officers too complained about what they perceived as the unrestrained way in which agents issued passes and allowed the holders to carry guns.¹¹¹ Clearly, even though the police recognized that that they had no legal right to restrict the movement of Indigenous people, they continued to use their authority to do just that. Neither they nor the DIA wanted to push their will to restrict movement to a point where overt resistance would ensue, but they continued to see the pass system as part of a disciplinary surveillance network to achieve the same end with less potential risk of armed conflict and more probability of long-term success.

As the twentieth century opened, the DIA recognized that it could not cause people to remain on reserves by the weight of its own authority alone and continued to ask the NWMP to enforce the restriction from towns especially. While the Mounties were more than willing to see this done, they were not prepared to risk the loss of stature and perhaps public humiliation that non-compliance might provoke. In summer 1901, DSGIA James Smart wrote to NWMP Comptroller White and complained about Indigenous people “continually going into towns and loafing about the streets. I think it might be wise to have a general order issued to the Police that no Indians should be allowed in the towns unless they hold a pass from the Agent.” A month later, he complained to White that he thought that “the order is not enforced as rigidly as would appear to be necessary.” White confirmed that the NWMP “never hesitate to order the Indians back to their Reserves who have no apparent object in remaining around the Town” but identified an additional problem.

[I]t is very hard to draw the line. Townspeople encourage the red man when he has money to spend, and it frequently happens that settlers are glad to have an Indian family or two camped near them so that they may get the benefit of their labour; and, unfortunately, white men have on more than one occasion taken up the defense of the Indians and their legal right to be off their Reserves if they behave themselves.

The mounted police were only too willing, still, to enforce the restriction, but wanted to “lay down a rule, and have legal authority to enforce it” otherwise White felt it “scarcely fair to throw upon them the responsibility of saying when an Indian should be ordered to break camp and return to his Reserve…”¹¹² Unlike the earlier suggestions of the 1880s by policemen S.B. Steele, A.G. Irvine, and others that the police were in the best position to decide when Indians should be returned to their reserves, now, since it might result in animosity from settler groups, the mounted police did not want the discretionary power. Indigenous people in Treaty 7 continued to request passes and extensions to existing passes, sometimes through third parties, and policemen continued to request that DIA officials not issue these, but rather keep Indigenous people on their reserves.¹¹³ The police also continued to use what they termed “persuasion” rather than direct force even though the quality of the distinction is not always clear in the historical record.

The practice of issuing passes to restrict movement continued after World War I even as Indigenous people continued to resist this and other restrictions. Indian Commissioner Graham complained in 1921 that in some cases Indigenous people requested passes to visit sick relatives, but in fact left their reserves to participate in ceremonies like dances. Graham wrote that the commissioner of the mounted police “does not ask what dances are legal but asks regarding what dances the Indians should be allowed to take part in in order that he may issue uniform instructions to the members of the Force.” Graham confirmed as well that the mere presence of the police was enough to “impress the Indian with the fact that he is acting in disobedience to the wishes of the Department.”¹¹⁴ This would seem to further illustrate the coercive intent of the mere presence of the mounted police.

There is oral evidence confirming that the pass system remained in operation into the mid-1930s, but the repudiation of passes, though certainly not of surveillance of Indigenous people, seems finally to have come in the early 1940s.¹¹⁵ In 1941, C. Pant Schmidt, Inspector of Indian Agencies for the Alberta Inspectorate, was asked to report on a speech he made at a conference on Indigenous affairs in Montana concerning his policy of issuing “permits to be absent from the reserve to Indians who wished to visit other agencies in Canada or in the United States.” While Schmidt stated that he was “satisfied that our American friends did not interpret my words to mean that the carrying of a permit to leave his reserve was obligatory for an Indian,” he forwarded a blank copy of a pass to Ottawa, printed with a space for the date “192_” indicating that passes were printed and made available at least into the 1920s. In turn, the DIA issued a circular to all agents in the Prairie Provinces, included a copy of the pass forwarded by Schmidt, and informed them all “that notwithstanding the fact that these permits were issued by the Department in the past; there is nothing in the Indian Act to prevent an Indian from leaving his Reserve.”¹¹⁶

As part of a matrix of other policy and legislation meant to confine Indigenous people to their reserves, the pass system was an entirely effective component, especially in its ability to facilitate surveillance, of the project to expand liberal Canada. In addition to the pass system, this matrix included applying the vagrancy provisions of the criminal code, the restrictions against trespass in the Indian Act, violations of which were determined by DIA officials not reserve residents, withholding of adequate food stuffs, prohibitions against ceremonies like the potlatch on the British Columbia coast and the sun dance on the plains, restrictions against participation in fairs and exhibitions, and the growing limitations related to school attendance and visitation by parents. All of this was combined with the coercive impact of displays and shows of force by the mounted police and the DIA’s ability to deny “privileges” like the provision of foodstuffs for any manner of supposed affronts to DIA objectives.

Restriction of Movement in British Columbia

In British Columbia, there was no operational pass system nor was there the same degree of restriction of movement generally as there was in the prairie west. Secwepemc elders confirm that the period under discussion here is before “Indian Affairs had really taken hold of the Indians” in this area.¹¹⁷ Since the “demands of war [World War I] coupled with our remoteness delayed the full effect of the system until a decade after the war,” the Secwepemc were “just beginning to come under the domination of the Indian agent” at the end of this period.¹¹⁸ For example, at various times the agent at Kamloops and Okanagan had to send advance notice of his coming to ensure that residents would be present on their reserve when he arrived. Sometimes he even met community leaders in hotels in town.¹¹⁹ As British Columbia’s Indian Superintendent Arthur Wesley Vowell reminded DSGIA Frank Pedley in 1903, “[i]n connection with the Indians in British Columbia it is well to recollect that they consider themselves as a self supporting people, mixing freely wherever they please, and may expect to find profitable employment, amongst the whites, as independent so long as they obey the laws governing the Dominion and the Province.”¹²⁰ As noted, there were only a few treaties in British Columbia and none in the southern interior. As a result there were no annuity payments, programs of farm instruction, or regular provision of foodstuffs and, coupled with the absence of the mounted police and far fewer DIA employees, there was less opportunity for coercion.

This does not mean that disciplinary surveillance was not applied in aid of the expansion of liberalism in British Columbia. Rather the point is only that the official structures to facilitate it were not as well developed nor as well staffed as they were in southern Alberta, at least in the period under discussion here and especially away from southern Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. As was the case in the prairie region, though, even those few First Nations who entered into the Douglas Treaties in the 1850s found that guarantees for freedom of movement in pursuit of economic activity were gradually eroded.¹²¹

As in the Treaty 7 region as well, special attention was paid in the interior of British Columbia to the movements and activities of Indigenous women. An agent might simply rely on the force of his authority as Kamloops Agent J.F. Smith did in 1914 when he “[o]rdered Minnie August to leave the Resturant [sic] in which she was supposed to be working.”¹²² He might also employ the Vagrant Act as Smith did the following year when he sentenced Celia Louie to three months in jail.¹²³ An agent might also request that a young woman be escorted back to her reserve by the British Columbia Police or he might send her back to a reserve supervised by another agent.¹²⁴ Even youthful pranks were not to be tolerated where there was a possibility of sexual interaction. When boys from the Kamloops reserve made “clandestine visits to the girls” at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, they were sentenced under the Vagrant Act. Nor were these mere slaps on the wrist. One boy was sentenced by the agent to six months hard labour and two others to one month.¹²⁵

Sometimes in British Columbia, though, the restriction of movement impacted negatively on non-Indigenous businesses. In his efforts to restrict the movement of Indigenous women in 1889, R.H. Pidcock, Indian agent for the Kwakewlth Agency, employed the services of the provincial police to stop six women from Alert Bay traveling to Victoria by steamer. Immediately the manager of the C.P. Navigation Company complained to Pidcock’s superiors that since the men accompanying these women refused to board the ship without the women there was considerable loss of revenue as the result of the agent’s actions. Pidcock was gently informed that there is no law in Canada that “precludes Indians from traveling from one place to another” so that if women wanted to travel to Victoria he should “prevent them from so doing by moral persuasion and not by force.”¹²⁶ In his defense, Pidcock stated:

I had previously been requested by numbers of the young men to prevent if possible their wives and sisters from going to Victoria, who they know seldom return except in a diseased or dying condition. No men were prevented from taking passage or ever have been. The majority of the Indians in this Agency are anxious to stop the women from going away for immoral purposes, but do not feel themselves strong enough at present to take action in the matter.¹²⁷ Since the men accompanying the women to whom he denied passage refused to board the ship in protest, Pidcock’s comments seem somewhat disingenuous. Still, he was supported in his actions by a local missionary and soon by the DIA as well.¹²⁸

To support this restriction of movement, Edgar Dewdney in his capacity as SGIA recommended to the Privy Council that a bill be enacted in British Columbia to restrict Indigenous women from “frequenting towns for immoral purposes.”¹²⁹ The Federal Minister of Justice reported that the Vagrant Act could be applied to “Indian women frequenting houses of ill-fame. That Act, of course, does not make it a crime for an Indian woman to leave a reserve or her home with an immoral object, and those administering the Indian Affairs will know best whether it will be advisable to obtain legislation forcing restrictions upon Indian women leaving their reserve for any purpose whatever. The matter does not however, appear to be ripe for legislation as yet.”¹³⁰

Most attention appears to have been directed at keeping Indigenous women away from settler population centres of Victoria and the Lower Mainland. To this end, Indian Superintendent A.W. Vowell wrote to coastal steamship companies the following spring and requested that they “refuse passage to all Indian women unless they have permits from their Agents to take passage on the Steamer or other boats, to certain points of destination.” While the initial responses from these companies seemed to indicate that they were willing to comply, as long as the other firms did as well, Superintendent Vowell reported that “so long as an Indian woman is able and willing to pay her fare upon any of these boats passage will not be denied her.”¹³¹ Like many east of the Rockies, Agent Pidcock remained in favour of a generalized restriction akin to the pass system but Superintendent Vowell argued that such a system would be “practically inoperative and the cause of much disquietude to all the Indians in the Province” since “many bands of Indians are beyond the reach of the Agents, who are the only representatives of the law known in some of these out of the way places, as far as the exercise of any immediate supervision over their actions is concerned.”¹³² This position was accepted by SGIA Thomas Mayne Daly who recognized that the distance between Indigenous people and their agents in British Columbia would make it impractical to obtain a pass before leaving their reserve to obtain work.¹³³

Pidcock changed tactics and had a petition apparently signed by thirty-one Kwakwaka’wakw men stating “we are not able to stop the shameful traffic with Indian women without the assistance of the law” and requested that steamers only be allowed to transport women with the approval of the agent or designate. To this, the department responded that its employees would always help, “when requested by the husband or brother or any one having proper authority, to stop a woman from going away.”¹³⁴ It is impossible to know for sure the circumstances that led to the creation of this document or the actual feelings of the community regarding the sentiments expressed in it. It seems unlikely though that any community would willingly turn over the right of its members to move freely to an outside authority and the incident involving the forcible restraint by the BCPP supports this interpretation. Women’s freedom of movement was still an issue in 1909 when J.E. Rendle, a missionary on the coast, requested that the DIA “order the Indians to all live in their village.” While the DIA passed on their own concerns to British Columbia, the Province’s attorney general reported that things were “not in such a bad state as the Indian Department would lead us to believe.”¹³⁵

In British Columbia then, there were those in favour of restriction of movement and this was supported by Edgar Dewdney and others at high levels in the DIA. However, the absence of a national police force and a relative paucity of department employees made enforcement of such a proposal improbable. The needs of cannery owners and steamship companies, which required Indigenous mobility, also operated against the application of a generalized confinement system in British Columbia. As a partial remedy, and to reinforce Indian Act provisions, some agents turned to band council resolutions to restrict “outsiders” from reserves if not directly the movement of their own band members.¹³⁶ This relatively early example of using the political structure established by the DIA to achieve its own ends would be much more fully developed in subsequent years. Still, while not to depreciate the restrictions and prohibitions faced by Indigenous people in British Columbia, this took time to develop, especially away from the coast. As former Sk’emtsin (Neskonlith) chief George Manuel confirmed, “it took the federal government quite a long time to build up an administrative structure to control Indian communities in the interior at all.”¹³⁷ The still emerging structures of administration and looser weave in the surveillance network in the British Columbia interior required less forceful tactics and allowed a greater, though certainly still circumscribed, ability to move about and maintain established lifeways than was the case in many regions east of the Rockies. In southern Alberta the devices employed to restrict movement could be more comprehensive and compelling.

The array of tactics employed to restrict Indigenous movement in the economic and cultural interests of non-Indigenous settlers allowed remarkable flexibility. That this web of restriction was only part of a larger matrix of ideas, understandings, and actions engaged to advance these interests, served to increase the number of tactics available to further the ultimate objective of non-Indigenous control of Indigenous lands, resources, and bodies. If one tactic had to be withdrawn or minimized for any reason, another, more acceptable or more effective, could be engaged it its place. The restriction of movement in western Canada illustrates this larger process in a microcosm.

Mounted Police and the DIA

As partners in this process, there were some in the mounted police who pressed for a restriction of movement that superseded restrictions imposed by the DIA in the Treaty 7 region. On related issues as well, the police, at least on occasion, went beyond the wishes of DIA officials in their zeal to scrutinize the activities of Indigenous people. In the wake of police investigations of settler complaints in 1894 that the Kainai were killing their cattle, and DIA indignation at the suggestion of both police and settlers that this activity was the result of their ration policy, NWMP Commissioner White reported that: “[a]t present it appears to be considered an offence for a Policeman to speak to an Indian, or set foot on an Indian Reserve.”¹³⁸ The “careful inquiries” of the police on the reserve were apparently not appreciated by the DIA, which was convinced that its agents “have the best opportunities to know the facts” and that the settler alarm was “an annually recurring scare” since the inception of the DIA in the west. DSGIA Thomas Mayne Daly objected “to any interference with the internal economy of Agencies or Reserves” by the police “otherwise than through our Agents” because “direct and independent interference [by the police]…can hardly fail to produce disastrous consequences.”¹³⁹ The mounted police seemed to have learned their lesson regarding openly challenging DIA authority and jurisdiction. When they made inquiries regarding opposition to a land sale on the Piikani reserve, Comptroller White informed Commissioner Perry that he filed away the relevant documents “in a sealed envelope” knowing that the department would not be happy with the police investigating issues involving the actions of its agents related to Indigenous lands.¹⁴⁰ This did, however, work both ways. While the NWMP requested that the department keep a closer supervision of Indigenous peoples, the DIA made similar requests of the police. Officers of the NWMP and the DIA each accused the other of heavy-handed interference with their duties involving First Nations people.

The police were, from their arrival in the west, particularly interested in restricting First Nations access to firearms and in quantifying the numbers of weapons in Indigenous hands. When NWMP Inspector J.M. Walsh of Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills restricted the sales of “improved” arms, to those with his permission, he stated that the “Indian is not ignorant of the value of an arm that is capable of dictating better terms for him” and claimed that a muzzle loader was sufficient for hunting. Walsh continued by asking, “why do they purchase the breech loader? I can see no other reason than the wish to be as well armed as the whiteman.” Walsh claimed further that Indigenous people living on the U.S. side of the border, to whom such weapons and ammunition were restricted, would get them from Canada.¹⁴¹ Even Indigenous scouts employed by the police were denied arms.¹⁴²

Interestingly, however, even though a statute was passed following the 1885 resistance that permitted the DSGIA to prohibit the sale of fixed ammunition, DSGIA Hayter Reed chose not to do so in the Treaty 7 region. This was met with considerable dissatisfaction on the part of the NWMP.¹⁴³

While the impact of police restriction of First Nations activity, by physical force, by show of force, and simply by their presence, was profound it was not universal. Occasionally NWMP constables advocated in support of Indigenous interests to the DIA. For example, when the DIA decided to reduce the distribution of rations, the police intervened. Here though, their motives were not simply altruistic, since their primary concern seems to have stemmed from the location of Treaty 7 First Nations “in the midst of tens of thousands of ranche cattle, and so inconveniently near the boundary line” that they “are, if hungry and discontented, likely to commit depredations and involve the country in serious trouble…”¹⁴⁴ Ten years later, in 1904, Constable Amer of the Macleod District stated that another reduction in rations would “have a great tendency to increase crime of a serious nature” in the area.¹⁴⁵

By far the most common response of the police was the refusal to involve themselves in the grievances of Indigenous people. In 1897, Red Crow and thirty-four others from the Kainai reserve went to protest to Superintendent Steele about the insufficiency of food supplied by the DIA. Steele reported that since he was, “anticipating a long palaver, I put them off until the following day” but “they returned and gave expression to their grievances, which may be purely imaginary.” Steele did not make “any enquiry as to whether there are grounds for these complaints” but he “notified [agent] Mr. Wilson and sent him a copy of this report.”¹⁴⁶ Similarly, in 1903, a group of Kainai went to Inspector Burnett to protest, unfortunately to no avail, the DIA’s efforts to lease part of their reserve to White ranchers.¹⁴⁷ In 1917 a Kainai representative went to see Superintendent Cortlandt Starnes regarding the questionable conditions surrounding the sale of part of their reserve. Starnes “explained to him that we had nothing to do with the Indian Department any more and could not interfere in any way…They imagine I could go out there and check these Voting Lists.”¹⁴⁸ Clearly the police were not willing to jeopardize their relationship with the DIA or to revive earlier animosities simply to investigate allegations of illegality presented by Indigenous people.

When, in 1907, RNWMP Comptroller White did write to DSGIA Pedley in relation to a food supply reduction on the Kainai reserve and stated that “it might be well for your Department, before cutting off the ration of all able bodied Indians on the Blood reserve, to consider from all sides the probable consequences of such a step,” the issue quickly shifted from a concern regarding the provision of adequate nourishment to a jurisdictional contest between the RNWMP and the DIA.¹⁴⁹ As was repeated many times in both the Treaty 7 area and in the British Columbia interior, the concerns of First Nations were often subverted by the personal or institutional pride of White officials. Clearly Indigenous people could not count on the mounted police to come to their aid, but their continued belief that they might find some relief from that source is indicative of the success of disciplinary surveillance and expansionary liberalism.

In British Columbia, since the BCPP did not believe it their duty to involve themselves with complaints from Indigenous people, conflicts of the type discussed above were rare. Occasionally the police in British Columbia did remove non-Indigenous people from reserves, but for the most part, like their counterparts in the NWMP in the Treaty 7 region, the BCPP in the Kamloops and Okanagan areas simply referred Indigenous complainants to the local Indian agent.¹⁵⁰ As a result, Indigenous people in British Columbia were under no illusion that they might appeal to a law enforcement agency for legal assistance and were somewhat quicker in developing their own political organizations. At the same time, while there were similar settler requests that the police more actively protect their interests, both the BCPP and the DIA in British Columbia were, because of their smaller numbers, far less able to act quickly or definitively.

In the prairie west on the other hand, in addition to their work in enforcing the Indian Act and providing other services to the DIA, it is evident throughout the period under discussion here that the NWMP and its successors were actively involved in directly protecting the economic interests of Anglo-Canadians even when these interfered with the rights, interests, or desires of Indigenous people. In 1885, for example, when a group of Blackfoot camped in the vicinity of Sand’s Mill near Maple Creek “lighted a fire near the buildings and danced and sang all night” the workers at the mill “all bolted.” A detachment of NWM Policemen was stationed at the mill “as without protection the mill hands would not remain at all.”¹⁵¹ Even though none of the Blackfoot nations were involved in any of the events of 1885 the coercive power of the state was brought in to ensure production at this small mill would continue unimpeded. Following the events of 1885, and with the growth of non-Indigenous settlement in subsequent decades, freedoms guaranteed to liberal citizens in Canada became increasingly denied to First Nations people; the police most often sided with non-Indigenous settlers and business owners if any conflict of interests arose.

The Visual Impact of the Mounted Police

The approach taken by the DIA, to attempt to convince First Nations people of the ultimate beneficence of its objectives, was necessarily followed by the NWMP and its successors as well. While the mounted police used force in particular localized circumstances, they did not, during the period under discussion at least, have the military strength to force their will in any widespread or generalized fashion. Where the force could not convince Indigenous people of its altruism it chose to rely on visual impact. Scarlet tunics made little sense on the brown prairie or green parkland where the approach of the police could be observed at considerable distance but, when they were worn, the uniforms did have a visual impact. The police early on also seized on opportunities to display their weaponry. As police surgeon R.B. Nevitt reported in 1874 “[a]t two o’clock the Indians came and we took them out on the prairie to show them the effect of our artillery at a long range – they were greatly impressed thereat.”¹⁵² This practice was repeated at Blackfoot Crossing during the negotiations leading to the signing of Treaty 7.

At the same time, however, this show of potential force could not be a sustained, regular, or extemporaneous undertaking lest the resident First Nations were to see it as a provocation. Police worked “in concurrence” with the DIA “in order that the Indians may not misunderstand the object for which the Police are coming…there is danger of the Indians becoming excited and unnecessarily alarmed when a large body of Police visits them without warning.”¹⁵³ When, in 1896, Superintendent Howe requested that Inspector Macpherson of Calgary go to Blackfoot Crossing and select three scouts from the reserve there, he cautioned “[y]ou can patrol in the vicinity of the Reserve as long as you think necessary, procure all information possible regarding Indians, but impress upon them that you simply came down to select Scouts.”¹⁵⁴

Despite their localized shows of force and military organization, the NWMP operated most effectively as an arm of “informal” imperialism working to reestablish what Alexander Morris referred to as “the moral influence exercised by the Hudson’s Bay [Company] over the Indians.”¹⁵⁵ As Walter Hildebrandt has argued “the goal of the Mounties could eventually be described as a cultural one – to gain the trust of the Natives and then wean them from their customs and beliefs by enforcing laws intended to diminish the Native culture. This was also to be done by example, persuasion, government programs and education.”¹⁵⁶ Out of necessity, Canada’s policies differed from those in the United States where undisguised imperialism was an especially expensive procedure costing, by the 1870s, $20 million, more than the entire Canadian budget of $19 million. On the other hand, Canada spent only $400,000 a year on the NWMP.¹⁵⁷ Further, the undisguised and unbridled appropriation of land and resources could not be easily harmonized with Canada’s liberal agenda. Here the policy had to be masked with the assertion that the transfer of land and resources was inevitably in the interests of the colonized.

Relations Between the NWMP and the BCPP

While the NWMP was being organized for duty in southern Alberta, a tour through western Canada convinced Major General Selby Smythe that while the small population of White settlers in the Kootenay region would have a difficult time defending themselves if the necessity arose, he could not recommend that mounted police be sent through “the vastnesses of the Rocky Mountains more especially as this force being raised for special service in the North West Territory (Military reasons apart) should not be called upon for duty in British Columbia.”¹⁵⁸

In most circumstances, the mounted police and the BCPP kept to their own jurisdictions while cooperating in law enforcement, personnel, and in other matters. Normally, the NWMP restricted their activities to the territory east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, but there were occasions when the NWMP did cross into British Columbia for extended periods. In 1886, because of the fears that the Ktunaxa (Kootenay) might turn to violence in the wake of long-standing grievances in regard to preemptions in their territories and, more immediately, in support of their claim to Joseph’s Prairie near present-day Cranbrook, which had also been claimed by Colonel James Baker, J.A. Macdonald ordered 75 Mounted Police into British Columbia.¹⁵⁹ Even though the NWMP Commissioner warned that it was not possible “at the present time…without seriously jeopardizing the peace and safety of the NW Territories” Macdonald seems to have been particularly concerned with appeasing the provincial government of British Columbia.¹⁶⁰ Since Indigenous people were a federal responsibility, the British Columbia government argued that the NWMP should be brought to the province to deal with any issues involving them at federal expense.

The provincial government, though, wanted final authority regarding when and where the NWMP would be deployed and complained when British Columbia was not consulted. When NWM Policemen were somewhat reluctantly sent to guard the construction of the railway through the Crowsnest Pass they got into conflict with the BCPP over jurisdiction. When they were sent to the Yukon gold fields “the British Columbia Government had raised objection to the mounted police being retained in that Province, and that instructions had been given to withdraw all except those necessary for the protection of the Customs Officials.”¹⁶¹

In 1918, the RNWMP was authorized to increase its strength to 1200 and to be the sole federal force west of Port Arthur.¹⁶² There was, however, continued conflict in local areas over jurisdiction and recurrent complaints from British Columbia politicians that they were expected to come to the assistance of federal authorities but could not expect federal assistance in return.¹⁶³ While British Columbia recognized the need for the federal presence during the unrest and uncertainty following World War I, by 1922, British Columbia’s Attorney General argued “[i]t would seem to me that the time for cutting down the R.C.M.P. force is at hand” and that aside from the large centres like Vancouver, “their services in the Province can be dispensed with.”¹⁶⁴ In 1927, a few years after a number of RCMP detachments were closed, the attorney general again requested RCMP assistance “in the control of Indians in the province” since the BCPP still did not consider this activity part of its duties.¹⁶⁵

Force Strength and External Assistance

Even if conditions were perfect, however, the BCPP with its force of less than one hundred in 1897,¹⁶⁶ and only 227 men and officers thirty years later,¹⁶⁷ could provide only rudimentary surveillance of the hundreds of Indigenous communities scattered throughout the province let alone offer much of a show of force “should trouble occur.” Even the legendary NWMP and its successors, whose perceived success in the prairie west continues to afford it mythical status, did not have the manpower to quell a widespread armed resistance if the First Nations, even those resident in the Treaty 7 area alone, had ever chosen that route.¹⁶⁸

Clearly, First Nations were aware of the situation, but chose generally peaceful as opposed to military means to press their concerns even as non-Indigenous citizens remained fearful. George Murdoch, a harness-maker and soon to be the first mayor of Calgary, who did business with both the NWMP and the Blackfoot, wrote in his diary in May of 1883 that the “[p] olice came back without any prisoners, as the squaws made it so hot for them that they had to let them go, so a force was sent off to do the work and when they got there they found that they had quit their reserve. Fears are entertained of a rising.”¹⁶⁹ In 1896, the NWMP inspector stationed at Calgary reported that “[t]he Indians know we are short of men, and they also know that the Indian Officials are feeling anything but safe; they are taking advantage of these two facts in my opinion and unless something is done at once to show them that they are not the masters of the situation as they seem to think, serious trouble will ensue.”¹⁷⁰

In many ways, this circumscribed ability of the police to respond with military force suited Canada’s liberal framework very well. The NWMP could offer a localized spectacle when necessary while it could engage in racially informed law enforcement, or involve itself in actions in regard to Indigenous people that had no legal foundation, when it deemed such measures were appropriate.

When the situation called for it in either region, outside assistance could be called upon to augment the surveillance abilities of the police. The police forces in both regions often got assistance in their efforts from individual private detectives or detective agencies.¹⁷¹ In British Columbia, BCPP Commissioner Hussey had a particularly close relationship with P.K. Ahern, Seattle agent for the US based Pinkerton’s Detective Agency.¹⁷² Pinkerton’s men were utilized on a number of occasions by provincial authorities, including the 1911 surveillance of A.E. O’Meara, lawyer, Anglican lay missionary, and vocal advocate for Indigenous land and resource rights.¹⁷³

Police Forces and Indigenous Employees

In addition to the surreptitious observations of detectives, both the BCPP and the NWMP found the surveillance provided by First Nations people themselves very useful. The BCPP regularly employed Indigenous people to observe activity on reserves and initiate legal proceedings against the Indigenous residents.¹⁷⁴

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the First Nations of the British Columbia interior did utilize “watchmen” to observe the conduct of their people. But as Sk’emtsin (Neskonlith) elder Mary Thomas points out, watchmen, appointed by the First Nation itself, originally acted as community social workers looking for signs of domestic trouble or other activity contrary to the group’s well-being. Punishment was in the form of service to the community. It was only with the arrival of Europeans and the introduction of an array of crimes against White institutions that both this form of punishment and the reasons for surveillance were altered.¹⁷⁵

The qualifications necessary to become “Indian police” appointed by the BCPP and the DIA were fundamentally different than those of the watch-men. “Indian policeman” Isaac Harris, for example, was much favoured by both the BCPP and the DIA, but support for him within the Okanagan nation was questionable at best. The Okanagan Chief at the Head of Okanagan Lake complained that it was Harris’ marriage to the Métis daughter of a neighbouring White rancher, Cornelius O’Keefe, and “O’Keefe’s interest with the [Indian] Agent allowed him to live on the reserve. The said Harris is not a member of this band in accordance with the Indian Acts at no time was there a vote of the people taken for his admission to the band, at the present time this man Harris is under grave suspicion and my people consider him directly inimical to the interest of the band.”¹⁷⁶ Another Okanagan Chief, Baptiste Logan, requested the DIA remove Harris from the reserve.¹⁷⁷ Nevertheless, Harris remained a policeman, was regularly employed as an interpreter, and would soon be given his own reserve for his family and himself to reside on.

In the prairie west, as R.C. Macleod has pointed out, J.A. Macdonald, who created the NWMP, originally hoped to mirror the model of the British Army in India and recruit large numbers of First Nations and Métis men into the force.¹⁷⁸ In 1889, writer J.W. Powers drew another connection when he explained to SGIA Edgar Dewdney that

[i]n Ireland where 3/4^ths of the middle and lower classes are impregnated with the bitterest hatred of English rule and where every other young man is a veiled rebel one would at first sight suppose this class would be a poor one for the British Government to recruit a ‘Royal’ Constabulary from. But such is not the case. No sooner does Pat take the oath of allegiance and don Her Majesty’s uniform than he is completely transformed into a sterling Loyalist…Why not the Indian police do similar good work in the Territories?¹⁷⁹

Dewdney was already convinced of the utility of scouts and Indigenous policemen. In his annual report for that year, Dewdney wrote that Indigenous people were “doing good service” as scouts for the NWMP and that a number had also been appointed under the Dominion Police Act to serve as constables on reserves. These appointments, he felt, would not only make it much easier to detect and prove infractions of the “laws regulating Indian affairs,” but would do so at much less expense than if White policemen were employed.¹⁸⁰

According to the text of Treaty 7, not only did the First Nation signatories agree to abide by Canadian law, but also to “assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulations of this Treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.”¹⁸¹ In other words, not only were Indigenous people compelled to obey foreign laws but, as Howard Adams has confirmed for earlier numbered treaties, “they were required to act as stool pigeons against their people.”¹⁸² The NWMP, despite some individual complaints, employed Indigenous people in its surveillance efforts at various points throughout the period under investigation here.¹⁸³ In 1887, Comptroller White wrote to Commissioner Herchmer to report that the “Minister desires that you will ask the Indian Commissioner to make known to the principal Indian Chiefs that, provided the experiment of employing Indians in connection with the Police is found satisfactory, a larger number will be engaged next year.”¹⁸⁴ The following year Macdonald authorized up to twenty-five people to fill these positions. Thirteen were requested for the Treaty 7 area: six Kainai, three Piikani, and four Siksika.¹⁸⁵

In 1890, Indian Commissioner Reed suggested that a “flying patrol,” under the command of a NWMP non-commissioned officer, be selected by the “Chief of the Bloods in conjunction with the Agent” to patrol the ranching country of southern Alberta.¹⁸⁶ By the end of the following year, DSGIA Vankoughnet supported the plan and reported that Reed was able to recommend that the police employ “some fifty promising young men of the Blackfoot Indian community” as a discrete unit “thus saving the country the cost of supporting them in idleness, and at the same time benefiting themselves by keeping them usefully employed and out of mischief.”¹⁸⁷ Again, employment of this sort would, in the eyes of the DIA, serve three purposes: it would reduce the government’s financial burden incurred as the result of its treaty obligations, it would permit a level of surveillance of which non-Indigenous police were incapable, and it would act as an instrument of “civilization” on the employees themselves.

NWMP Comptroller White noted that “particularly in the ranching country, the experiment has already proved a success and it is only a matter of increasing the number and supplying them with clothing or rough uniform[s] by which the settlers and ranch men would distinguish them from other Indians.”¹⁸⁸ Indian Commissioner Reed too felt that the employment of scouts by the police would not only provide them with employment, but would also help “enlisting them on the side of law and order” while a newspaper of the same year reported that if half the police force were “composed of Indians, a large proportion of the bucks who might otherwise be troublesome would be converted into steady supporters of the white regime.”¹⁸⁹

The problem in regard to scouts, according to NWMP Commissioner Herchmer though, was “to get Indians who are reliable, the ones recommended generally by the Indian Department are failures, and very few will stay more than a few days.” Herchmer continued, stating that superintendents “Deane and Steele will employ more scouts if they can get good ones, but on the score of economy I do not think it advisable to engage men who are not reliable.”¹⁹⁰

In general terms, White seems to have come to agree with Herchmer. In 1892, he wrote to Vankoughnet that he did not think the general employment of Indigenous scouts was practical because of “the inability of the Indians to pursue steady occupation.” He was concerned further that “If married, they bring their squaws with them, resulting, in many cases in immorality. The placing of a troop of Indians in the neighbourhood of a police post for drill and instruction with their squaws, children, ponies, dogs, and camp outfit, would be a source of inconvenience and anxiety.”¹⁹¹ At no time did the NWMP seem to consider the reasons why its Indigenous employees did not “pursue steady occupation” or the pressures they must have been under from their communities. Nor were they willing to adapt to the cultural requirements of these employees. During the period covered by this work, the racialized hiring practices of the NWMP, fears that they would not necessarily submit to police authority, and negative perceptions of their willingness and ability to work, ensured that Indigenous people never became regular members of the force.

First Nations people did, however, continue to act as scouts, “special constables,” and “detectives” on the reserves of Treaty 7, as Reed said to a NWMP inspector, “to keep your men informed of any suspicious movements on the part of other Indians.”¹⁹² At least some NWMP commanding officers recognized the value of these individuals to their overall surveillance objectives. Perhaps the general view was best articulated by the officer Commanding E Division at Calgary: “I would rather do without the scouts…yet their presence upon the Reserve, I am told, has a very beneficial effect on the Indians.”¹⁹³

Indian agents supported the employment of Indigenous police probably even more than the police themselves. As NWMP Superintendent Howe reported, for example, Agent Begg was most anxious to have some of the men on the Siksika reserve “enrolled as Indian Police, so that he could be kept informed as to what was going on, and where the Indians were.”¹⁹⁴ In some cases an Indian agent in Treaty 7 might appoint his own “Indian Police” for surveillance work¹⁹⁵ or, as the police did, offer rewards for evidence in particular instances.¹⁹⁶

Many individuals may have chosen to become scouts out of a genuine desire to help their communities, but it must be remembered that those communities had little if any input in the decision to employ people in these capacities. They were not, therefore, necessarily those most respected by their neighbours, but rather were engaged because they were believed most likely to support the policies and the values of their employers. As a result, scouts might find themselves disparaged by their communities as did Piegan Frank who complained to the NWMP “the Indians in this vicinity hate him.”¹⁹⁷ Fear of this opprobrium might also serve as a reason for not taking the job in the first place.¹⁹⁸

Surveillance of Police

Non-Indigenous people joined the police forces for a variety of reasons, many of which had little to do with a desire to enforce the law or to extend Anglo-Canadian values. Certainly there were opportunities to advance one’s self-interest beyond the wages that a policeman could earn. Constables in British Columbia were able to collect moieties for convictions under the liquor clauses of the Indian Act.¹⁹⁹ Others acted as private rent collection agents, sometimes even collecting rents from the operators of houses of prostitution from which they earned a commission.²⁰⁰ Still others were accused of illegally collecting a tax from each woman working as a prostitute in their district or of turning in favourable reports regarding the premises of licensed establishments.²⁰¹

Policemen in both the Treaty 7 and Kamloops-Okanagan regions often worked in relatively isolated conditions, far from the supervising gaze of their superiors. Yet this did not mean that their actions were not under constant scrutiny from settlers, church officials, and other members of their respective forces. In British Columbia, policemen were disciplined, dismissed, or asked to resign for reasons ranging from financial irregularities, to accepting presents from prostitutes, or public drunkenness.²⁰² From the existing reports, it is surprising that some constables were hired at all. It was reported of the constable at Osoyoos in 1906, for example, that “this man is of no use whatever & is scarcely ever found attending to his duties & complaints are being made about him every day. This place would be as well off without him.”²⁰³ He was accused of being “indolent and incompetent” and it was reported that he “was drunk, dealt Black Jack all night and that it is a well known fact that he visited the house of ill fame at Hedley.”²⁰⁴ The wayward actions of the other BCPP policeman were too observed by settlers and representatives of the church among others.²⁰⁵

Mounted Police constables in the Treaty 7 area also faced a variety of charges resulting from the observations of others. Constable R. Jones of Fort Macleod was convicted in 1884 of selling liquor to Indigenous people and “shooting at an Indian with intent to do grievous bodily harm.” For this, he was fined $300 and sentenced to twelve months in jail.²⁰⁶ In 1888, Constable Simons of the Stand Off detachment was accused of killing a Siksika woman, Only Kill, by giving her iodine. While the jury at inquest found that Simons had “been the cause of the death of ‘Only Kill,’” Superintendent Neale reported, “I do not think any Western jury will convict him.” Yet no jury ever had the opportunity to decide. When the case was heard before former Mountie, and by then Justice, J.F. Macleod, the Crown Prosecutor made application for Nolle Prosequi. Macleod granted the motion and released the prisoner.²⁰⁷

Certainly, the police officers in both regions under discussion here were caught up in the panoptic network, even if disciplinary surveillance operating to promote and maintain liberal capitalist formations naturally functioned less severely toward them than those further from the Anglo-Canadian ideal and so more subject to reform. Despite their personal and institutional detachment from this ideal, police forces remained significant nodes in the web of surveillance that enveloped Indigenous people. Western Canadian imperialism required the active participation of police officers who, not unlike soldiers in other colonial situations, were “simultaneously coerced and coercing, who enforced the will of the elite yet made demands themselves.”²⁰⁸

While neither police force was in any position to subdue a coordinated First Nations’ resistance to the extension of liberal Canada, both were part of a disciplinary surveillance complex conceived and operated for exactly that purpose. Each interrelated network of surveillance had its own institutional mandates and tactical considerations, which sometimes led to troubled relations, but the intent of each was to reform peoples for whom liberalism and capitalism were not self-evident truths. The tactical responses employed by police officers, like those of missionaries, DIA employees, and other newcomers to western Canada, were altered or renovated according to specific circumstances, which underscores the fluidity, diversity, and mutability of the Canadian colonial project more generally.

In southern Alberta, where the mounted police were specifically charged with facilitating the peaceful settlement of First Nations territories by non-Indigenous settlers, the impact of the disciplinary surveillance network in aid of liberal expansion was felt in the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people much more quickly than in the British Columbia interior. The significance of an established settler government in British Columbia and the impact of its surveillance activities should not be underestimated, especially in relation to the alienation of land and resources as will be shown below. But between 1877 and 1927 at least, as the discussion on the restriction of movement illustrates, the will of liberal Canada to contain and regulate Indigenous people was more forcefully and overtly extended east of the Rockies than it was to the west, especially away from regions connected to the thickest settler populations of the lower mainland and southern Vancouver Island. In southern Alberta too the true face of liberalism and the extent of its exclusionary predisposition was more densely masked.

In both these regions of western Canada, racialized constructions of liberalism, which served to fundamentally exclude Indigenous people from land ownership, were backed up by the force of direct military intervention when necessary. For, as Reverend George McDougall confirmed before the arrival of the NWMP in western Canada, “experience has taught us that Proclamations without a civil force to enforce them are not worth the paper they are written on.”²⁰⁹ But such interventions were extremely rare in the history of Canada. The main disciplinary mechanism and the principal reformatory apparatus was unquestionably, in fact could only be, surveillance.

While everyone in liberal Canada was under observation at some level, no single group experienced the intensity or continuity of surveillance that Indigenous people did. In addition to those groups and individuals mentioned above, who clearly made the observation of First Nations people a priority, only those defined as “Indians” had an entire government department dedicated to observing their actions and behaviour, and relieving them of their land and resources, while at the same time was charged with minimizing “the risk of a rebellion or of great dissatisfaction.”²¹⁰