Canadian History For Dummies E-Book

Will Ferguson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 888

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A wild ride through Canadian history, fully revised and updated!

This new edition of Canadian History For Dummies takes readers on a thrilling ride through Canadian history, from indigenous native cultures and early French and British settlements through Paul Martin's shaky minority government. This timely update features all the latest, up-to-the-minute findings in historical and archeological research. In his trademark irreverent style, Will Ferguson celebrates Canada's double-gold in hockey at the 2002 Olympics, investigates Jean Chrétien's decision not to participate in the war in Iraq, and dissects the recent sponsorship scandal.

Leseprobe

Canadian History For Dummies®

Canadian History For Dummies®

by Will Ferguson

Canadian History For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Published by John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd.6045 Freemont BoulevardMississauga, Ontario, L5R 4J3www.wiley.ca

Copyright © 2005 Will Ferguson. All rights reserved. No part of this book, including interior design, cover design, and icons, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Ferguson, Will

Canadian history for dummies / by Will Ferguson. — 2nd ed.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13 978-0-470-83656-3

ISBN-10 0-470-83656-3

1. Canada—History. I. Title.

FC164.F47 2005 971 C2005-902317-1

Printed in Canada

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About the Author

Will Ferguson has lived and worked in every region of Canada, from the Okanagan Valley of B.C. to the farmlands of rural Québec, from Saskatoon to southern Ontario, from Manitoba to P.E.I.

He is the author of several bestselling books on Canadian history and culture, including Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw (winner of the 2005 Leacock Medal for Humour) and Bastards & Boneheads (a study in Canadian leadership styles). With his brother Ian, he wrote the wildly successful humour book How to Be a Canadian, which sold over 150,000 copies and won the Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Will’s debut novel Happiness (originally published under the title Generica) won the 2002 Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. It has been published in 33 countries and 26 languages around the world.

Author’s Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Robert Harris, Robert Hickey, Pamela Vokey, and Elizabeth McCurdy for their work on the 2nd edition of Canadian History For Dummies, as well as the many good people who helped produce and promote the original 2000 edition: Joan Whitman, Tom Best, Amy Black, Melanie Rutledge, Jennifer Smith, Donna Brown, Rebecca Conolly, Kim Herter, and Jamie Broadhurst.

I would also like to thank my agent, Carolyn Swayze, as well as Kirsten Olson, Executive Director of the Legal Archives of Alberta; historians Harry Sanders and Donald Smith in Calgary, AB; Mark Zuehlke in Victoria, BC; and Pam and Steve Stackhouse in Saint John, NB.

The following readers either wrote to me or provided feedback on the original version of Canadian History For Dummies, and suggested changes and/or corrections that have been incorporated into the 2nd edition: Raisa Deber at the University of Toronto; Michael Dorosh of Calgary, AB; Tom Wright of Riverview, NB; Stephen Jones of Chicago, IL; Richard Harnik of Brooklyn, NY; and John Stolarski of Kettering, UK.

Many thanks! Comments on Canadian History For Dummies, 2nd Edition can be sent to me via the publisher or at my Web site: www.willferguson.ca

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at [email protected]. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

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Introduction

Canadian history is a lot of fun. There are heroes and villains, tragedies and triumphs, great battles and sudden betrayals, loyal refugees and long struggles for social justice. Our history tells us who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. Any place as eclectic and mixed up as Canada will never be able to settle on a single unified, homogenous national history that will please everyone, but make no mistake: There is a history that we need to know. The interpretations may vary — radically, at times — but there are still core events and important leaders from our past that every Canadian should be familiar with.

History matters, and we forget this truth at our peril.

— historian J.L. Granatstein

About This Book

When the first edition of Canadian History For Dummies (published in 2000) appeared on The Globe and Mail and National Post charts, a milestone had been reached. It was the first …For Dummies book ever to appear on a general bestseller list — in Canada, the States, or anywhere else. It went on to win the Canadian Authors Association Award for History (another first for a …For Dummies book).

But a lot has happened since 2000, and a brand-new, fully revised second edition was needed. From the terrorist attacks of September 11th to the war in Afghanistan, from Mad Cow to SARS, from the sponsorship scandal to Paul Martin’s tenuous minority government, this second edition includes the key events of recent years.

It also includes new material on previous topics. Every chapter in this book has been expanded, edited, altered, or rewritten in some way for the second edition. I have added material on the 1760 Battle of Restigouche, on the role Chief Justice Osgoode played in ending the slave trade, and on the “bride ship” of colonial Victoria (sent to supply young ladies for lonely bachelors). I have added the story of Chief Isaac of the Klondike Han, who faced an onslaught of strangers during the Gold Rush of 1897, and the story of how the West almost became One Big Province. I have added more on how medicare was developed, along with a sidebar on Tommy Douglas, the “Greatest Canadian,” and I have more than doubled the section on Canada’s military contributions to Word War II to include the invasion of Italy, the Scheldt Campaign, the Rhineland, and the liberation of Holland. All this — and more — has been added to the second edition.

Canadian History For Dummies is a crash course in Canadian literacy. It covers the essential dates, events, leaders, and historical themes from our past — and present. It also includes Web sites on related topics, so that you can expand and explore further the areas that interest you.

We all have those moments in life when we stop and look around and ask ourselves, “How on earth did I ever end up here?” And the answer lies, as always, in the contingencies of the past and the choices we made along the way. This book tries to answer that question on a national level: “How on earth did we ever end up here?”

History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstance. . . . And the encounter between character and circumstance is essentially a story.

— historian Donald Creighton

History is about the impact of the decisions we make and the ripple effects that follow. It’s a study of people and events, action and reaction, crisis and consequence. History can inspire us. It can anger us. It can teach us important lessons. It can be used as an alibi — or a weapon. But above all it is a story. In this case, the story of a country.

The “story” in history is important, and I have tried my best to give this book a narrative flow. I have also tried to introduce some lesser-known figures from Canada’s past.

People like Lizzie Cyr, the prostitute whose now-forgotten trial first set in motion a chain of events that led to the women’s rights crusade of the Famous Five and the Persons Case that followed.

Or the swashbuckling Sieur d’Iberville, whose exploits are worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Or the Canadian diplomat John Humphrey, who drafted the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN Declaration set both the standards and the ideals of today’s global village. It has had a huge impact on world events. Yet, few Canadians have ever heard of John Humphrey or are aware of what he achieved.

When I was living in the Loyalist town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, I used to drive by a small island almost every day. I never gave it much thought until one day, just in passing, I noticed a historical marker up from the shore. When I pulled over, I discovered that right there — right there in front of me — was the legendary St. Croix Island (once known, for grim descriptive reasons, as “Bone Island”). It was on that tiny tuft of land that a band of French colonists first suffered through a horrific winter 400 years before. It was there, on that small island, that Acadia was born: the first permanent European presence on mainland Canada. And here I was, driving by it, week after week, blissfully unaware. I was surrounded by ghosts, and I never even knew.

Strangers in their own land . . .

— author Robertson Davies on the relationship many Canadians have with their country and its history

How This Book Is Organized

It’s very simple. I took a straightforward chronological approach, with each part representing another step in Canadian development. You can jump around if you like, though I do recommend reading the chapters in any given part in the order they appear.

Part I: When Worlds Collide

This part deals with Canada’s First Nations and their initial contact with Europeans, beginning with the Vikings and ending with the first tentative colonies in Newfoundland, the Maritimes, and along the St. Lawrence. The Native societies of Canada prior to first contact were incredibly complex and varied: ranging from the military and political alliances of the Iroquois to the northern trade empire of the Ojibwa; from the small-band subsistence hunters of the northern forests to the austere lifestyle of the plains; from the intricate arts and social caste system of the Pacifc Coast to the survival techniques and adaptive genius of the Arctic Inuit. This wasn’t an empty continent that the European explorers first stumbled upon. Far from it.

Part II: The Rise of New France

Here I talk about the formative years of 1608 to 1701. It begins with Samuel de Champlain and the founding of French fur-trading colonies in the Maritimes and along the St. Lawrence. We look at the rise of an elaborate French culture in Canada, a sort of “Paris-in-exile,” as well as its ongoing frontier war with the Iroquois Confederacy. Jesuit missionaries travelled deep into Native territory spreading both germs and the gospel among the Huron and other nations. A new breed of trader was born — the voyageurs and woodsmen of New France — even as England outflanked France to the north, in the Hudson Bay. A fierce rivalry between the two European countries erupted, and battles raged from Arctic seas to the outports of Newfoundland.

Part III: The Fall of New France

I cover the fateful years of 1701 to 1766, which deals with the conquest of New France by Britain, something that has been described as the “Big Bang” of Canadian history. During the Seven Years’ War, Britain and France battled it out for final control of the continent. The Acadian colonists of the Maritime region were forced into exile, and the French fortress of Louisbourg, perched on the windswept coast of Cape Breton, was captured — and systematically destroyed. On the Plains of Abraham, outside the walled city of Québec, two armies faced off against each other: one British, one French. In a fierce 15-minute battle, the fate of Canada was decided.

Part IV: Canada: The Failed Republic?

Here you’ll read about the tumultuous years of 1766 to 1838. When the American colonies broke free of Great Britain, the northern ones stayed loyal. In this, the American Revolution ultimately created not one, but two new countries. In 1812, the Americans tried to finish the job and conquer Canada, and in 1837 rebellions within Upper and Lower Canada again tried to break the colonies free. Both attempts failed, and Canada remained independent of the United States. Meanwhile, in the vast interior of the continent, explorers were pushing their way overland — all the way to the Pacific.

Part V: The Roads to Confederation

This part looks at the energetic years of 1838 to 1891. This was an era of nation-building that marked the birth of modern Canada, as three colonies joined together to form a new Confederation. Under the terms of the 1867 British North America (BNA) Act, Canada’s essential character was set. And soon after, the Canadians purchased the vast North-West and invited B.C. into the fold. On the plains, the Métis (of mixed Native and European background) led an armed rebellion against the government — and the last spike of the CPR was driven home, joining Canada “from sea to sea.”

Part VI: The End of “English” Canada

The years between 1891 and 1929 were ones of optimism and disillusionment. It was an era that marked the high point of English-Canadian imperial pride — and its decline. The events discussed in this part include the opening of the Canadian West, the Klondike Gold Rush, World War I, and the fight for women’s rights. Canada’s multicultural character (neither French, English, nor Native) first began to take shape during this time, as waves of newcomers arrived in search of prosperity. The First World War, which brought old-school European imperialism to a crashing halt, also marked Canada’s “political independence.” It was an age not of nation-building but rather consolidation — a time when Canada moved from colony to country.

Part VII: Dark Days

The dark years of 1929 to 1959 were a time marked by three disastrous events: the Great Depression of the 1930s, the slaughter of World War II, and the tense Armageddon-game of the Cold War. During the ’30s, the economy collapsed, the Prairies turned into a dustbowl, and labour unrest and socialist movements rose. Then suddenly, as an ally in the war against Nazi Germany, Canada found itself plunged into unexpected prosperity. This in turn led to the consumer society of the 1950s and the baby boom that followed. And all the while, the threat of nuclear war between the Capitalist West and the Communist East hung over our heads. Canada was a “Middle Power,” in more ways than one. As a Soviet ambassador noted, Canada was “the ham in the Soviet–American sandwich.”

Part VIII: Noisy Evolution

This part covers 1960 to 1993. It begins with the Quiet Revolution in Québec, a cultural renaissance that gave birth to renewed nationalism — and violence. Martial law was declared and mass arrests were ordered. The violent wing of the separatist movement was crushed, but not the political arm, and in 1980 a referendum on “sovereignty-association” was held — and defeated. Canada’s Constitution came home with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but without the approval of Québec’s PQ government. Later attempts at “bringing Québec into the Constitution” failed and the country teetered at the edge of collapse.

Part IX: Toward a One-Party Rule

This part takes us from 1993 to the present, covering the Chrétien era and four Liberal election victories in a row, when Canada seemed to have only one governing party. It includes the near-death experience of the 1995 referendum and the subsequent attempt at outflanking the separatists with a “Plan B.” The terrorist attacks on the U.S., and Canada’s response — saying “yes” to Afghanistan, and “no” to Iraq — are included in this part, as is SARS, Mad Cow, West Nile and other fun topics. It brings us back full circle to Chrétien, with the fallout of the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery Inquiry that followed.

Part X: The Part of Tens

Here you’ll find great Canadian quotations (a sort of summarized history of Canada as told through some of the more memorable quips) as well as the most notable French-Canadian, English-Canadian, and Native leaders, and a list of important political firsts for women. The information in this part is dealt with in detail in previous chapters, but is gathered here for quick reference.

Appendix: Online Resources

Want to learn more? You’ll find a wealth of information at the Web site addresses listed here.

Icons Used In This Book

One of the trademarks of …For Dummies books is the use of icons. These are great when it comes to marking technical advice or computer tips, but when it comes to something like history — which is essentially a narrative — I thought it would be helpful to use “thematic icons” to mark the recurring patterns of Canadian history.

These icons allow you to follow the ongoing themes of Canadian history as they are played out. (And let me just say, I wish there had been thematic icons in the margins when I was struggling through Moby Dick back in college.) You can even read this book solely along thematic lines if you like, tracing the various “recurring dramas” of Canadian history as you go.

The three big themes of Canadian history are keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear. In Canadian History For Dummies, I’ve gone through and flagged these themes — along with some others.

A quick note about these icons: The symbols I chose only represent the themes. They aren’t meant to be taken literally. The Union Jack/fleur-de-lis icon, for example, is used in this book to represent everything from Acadia versus New England, to the LaFontaine/Baldwin political alliance of the 1840s, to Québec versus Ottawa in the 1990s.

The stylized maple leaf dates only to 1965, but is used here to symbolize Canadian independence from the earliest years of New France onward. It marks the Battle of Vimy Ridge, for example, even though the soldiers at that time would have been flying the Red Ensign, not the maple leaf.

The presence of the United States has had a strong impact on Canadian development, from the War of 1812 to our current “branch-plant” economy. So when you see this icon, brace yourself.

From the struggles of New France to the present-day separatist movement in Québec, this icon marks one of the central elements of our national history: the relationship between French and English Canada.

An eagle feather (an important symbol for most First Nations) signals issues dealing with aboriginal rights, from early colonial conflicts to current land claims.

One of the defining traits of Canada is that it has preferred evolution to revolution. Canada gained its independence gradually, and this icon — a maple leaf rising — marks key moments along the way.

This icon signals areas of disagreement, either among historians or the public at large. I try not to take sides, but . . .

Part I

When Worlds Collide

Starting off on the wrong foot. Early contact between Europeans and Canada’s Native groups didn’t always go smoothly . . .

By Adrian Raeside. Used by permission of Koko Press Inc.

In this part . . .

We look at Canada’s First Nations, from the Iroquois of the Eastern Woods to the buffalo hunters of the Plains, from the artists and noblemen of the Pacific Coast to the Inuit of the Far North. Then we look at the first Europeans to arrive on our shores: the Vikings, the “Three Big C’s” (Cabot, Cartier, and Champlain), and the two G’s (Gilbert and Guy). We also look at the fate of some of the early Arctic explorers. Hint: It wasn’t pretty.

Chapter 1

First Nations

In This Chapter

The Iroquois Confederacy terrorizes its neighbours

The Plains Indians create a Hollywood legend

The Pacific Coast Nations try to figure out what to do with all their wealth

The Inuit of the Far North adapt to a harsh environment

Canada has fifty-five founding nations rather than just the two that have been officially recognized.

— historian Olive Dickason

The first Canadians — the very first — arrived in prehistoric times when low sea levels created a temporary land bridge (dubbed “Beringia”) between Asia and Alaska. Early hunters, following the woolly mammoth, migrated overland into North America. When exactly this happened, no one is quite sure. Estimates range wildly from 100,000 to 10,000 years ago, depending on which expert you consult. The most commonly accepted view is that the first humans arrived roughly 15,000 years ago, with the oldest confirmed cultural site in the Americas being 13,350 years old (though sites in Alaska and Yukon suggest human occupation as long as 20,000 to 25,000 years ago). Either way, it was a long, long, long time ago: long before the birth of Christ, long before the pyramids were built, long before Moses led his people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

So, to say, as some do, that “we are all immigrants to Canada, even the Indians” is a gross distortion to say the least. Surely, any group whose roots in Canada go back to before the days of the pharaohs has a legitimate claim at being considered our “original” inhabitants and “first” nations. Indeed, when you hear commentators insisting that Native Canadians are “immigrants, same as everybody else,” I guarantee you they have a hidden agenda — usually one aimed at trying to undermine Native land claims and treaty rights.

By the time the Europeans showed up, a wide variety of aboriginal societies had long since evolved and spread across every region of North and South America. The diversity was remarkable. In Canada alone, there were more than 50 separate Native languages, many of which were as different as Chinese and English. Today, only three of these — Cree, Ojibwa, and the Inuktitut language of the Arctic — are in a strong enough position to survive. Entire nations have vanished; entire cultures have been lost.

Slow Collision

Calling the European invasion of Canada “a collision” is a bit misleading. The process occurred as much by stealth as anything, and it took centuries to unfold, with European trade goods often preceding the arrival of the Europeans themselves by several generations.

Trade is good. It allows people to redistribute materials, generate wealth, and improve their quality of life. Complex and long-standing trade routes were already in place among the First Nations long before the Europeans arrived. It is a myth that the Natives, gullible and innocent of the ways of the outside world, traded away valuable furs for trinkets. Far from it. They were notoriously shrewd in their dealings with the Europeans. The metal goods the outsiders brought in — the iron, the weapons, the axes, and especially the cooking pans — revolutionized Native life.

As the various Native societies jostled for position, ambushing, attacking, and attempting to outplay both their neighbours and the newcomers, a great social disruption occurred. This was inevitable: Cultures along trade routes are always transformed, and there is no doubt that European trade goods were both desirable and useful. And remember, the Europeans were also jostling for position. The French, Dutch, and English along the east coast battled it out for access to Native trade.

Not all imports were beneficial. Alcohol wreaked havoc among Native communities, and still does to this day. Native middlemen waged bloody wars of territorial control, and well-intentioned Christian missionaries caused terrible divisions within Native societies.

When the white man came, we had the land and they had the Bibles. Now they have the land and we have the Bibles.

— Chief Dan George

Even more deadly were the infectious diseases that the whites brought with them. The Europeans were crawling with germs, many of which were unknown in the New World. As a result, the First Nations had never developed a resistance to many of the illnesses the Europeans unwittingly introduced. Smallpox, measles, influenza, lung infections, and even the common cold all took a deadly toll on Native societies. Entire populations collapsed. It was a demographic catastrophe.

Here’s just one example: The Huron Confederacy in what is now northern Ontario had a population of 25,000 in the year 1600. But once Catholic missionaries and French traders made contact, a smallpox epidemic swept through the Huron community, killing thousands and leaving the population at scarcely 9,000 by 1640 — a shadow of its former greatness. Demoralized, with their population depleted and the missionaries sewing seeds of discord among them (the community was divided between those who had been converted and those who had not), the Huron could no longer maintain their once vast farmlands. Fields were abandoned. Villages sat empty. And the Huron, a once proud and powerful people, were overrun by their Iroquois enemies and destroyed. (See Chapter 3 for more on the Iroquois defeat of the Huron.)

Ethnohistorian Henry Dobyns estimates that the Native population of North America was more than 18 million prior to European contact — a number that fell a whopping 95 percent over the next 130 years. Ninety-five percent, mind you! That was far worse than the Black Death of the bubonic plague in Europe. (Other ethnohistorians support Dobyns’s conclusions, though they put the population at around 10 million prior to first contact.)

Not everyone agrees, however. More conservative historians, such as Alfred Kroeber, insist that the North American Native population was no more than one million prior to contact, and that any population decline was “moderate” and only partly due to disease. One thing is known from first-hand accounts and eyewitness reports: Disease did sweep through Native communities, did cripple their economies, did destroy their societies, and did leave haunting “ghost camps” in its wake. This awful human toll is not really reflected in any statistic.

Today, there are approximately one million Canadians of aboriginal descent. The government distinguishes among three broad categories: Indian, Inuit, and Métis (mixed ancestry), of which some 655,000 are legally recognized, or status. The aboriginal population today has the highest birthrate of any group in Canada. Together, they represent more than 3 percent of the Canadian population — and rising. Theirs is a history interwoven with Canada’s, and it is a point worth remembering: This wasn’t an empty continent that the Europeans stumbled upon, and it wasn’t an empty land that they claimed as their own.

Figure 1-1 shows the distribution of Native Groups in Canada at the time of first contact.

People of the Longhouse

Let’s clear up one point of confusion right at the start: The term Iroquoian refers to the Native people who lived in the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes region. They shared a similar language and culture.

Figure 1-1: Native Groups in Canada.

Among them were the Huron in the Georgian Bay area, the Neutrals in the Niagara region, and the Erie, who lived on the south side of Lake — well, you can probably figure that part out yourself.

The Iroquoian people were the northernmost farmers in North America, living in heavily fortified log-palisade towns and tending large farmland fields. Their communities contained as many as 2,000 people, and they relied heavily on agriculture, especially maize, squash, and beans.

Their lifestyle centred around longhouse dwellings. These longhouses, some reaching almost 100 metres in length, contained the members of an entire extended family: as many as 50 people, living under one common roof. (How they did it, I’ll never know. There were seven of us when I was growing up, sharing one bathroom and three bedrooms, and that was tough enough.)

The term Iroquois, however, usually refers to one specific group of Iroquoian people, namely, the Five Nations who inhabited key lands south of Lake Ontario in what is now New York State. From east to west, the Five Nations were Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. (They later became the Six Nations when the Tuscarora, a displaced Iroquoian nation from the south, joined them in 1722.)

Together, these Five Nations formed a powerful and important confederacy, one that played a crucial role in the early development of Canada (see Chapters 3 and 5).

The Great Law of Peace

[The Iroquois Confederacy] is in fact the oldest democracy on this continent. Its political system, which includes a voice for all and a balance of power between the sexes, existed when Europe still believed in the divine right of kings.

— author Ronald Wright

The founding of the Iroquois Confederacy (also known as the League of Five Nations) can be traced back fairly accurately to 1451 by a reference to a solar eclipse that occurred in the region — although other sources cite 1570. Either way, by the time the first Europeans arrived, the Confederacy was well established, giving the Iroquois both a united front and considerable political power.

Canada: An Iroquois nation?

Did the Great Law of Peace help to inspire the United States’ own Constitution? This is a hotly contested issue that has been raging for more than 20 years. In 1988, the U.S. Senate formally acknowledged “the contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution.” But the matter is far from settled, and historians remain strongly divided over the idea.

Did the American Founding Fathers lift some of their ideas from the 117-article constitution of the Iroquois, one that had existed for hundreds of years prior to the American Revolution? Benjamin Franklin, for one, was impressed with what the “ignorant savages” of the Iroquois Confederacy had achieved — namely, the creation of a self-governing union that had “subsisted for ages, and appears indissoluble.”

Certainly the Iroquois Confederacy, with its clear division between levels of government, provides a blueprint for the U.S. federal system (that is, states or provinces contained within a larger union). Canada, in turn, based its own version of the two-level federal system largely upon that of the U.S., making Canada — in spirit, anyway — “an Iroquois Nation.” However, one aspect of the Iroquois constitution was not adopted: women’s rights. Canada’s Indian Act of 1876 took the vote away from Native women, something they had held for centuries under Iroquois law.

The Confederacy was founded by the semi-mythical Dekanahwideh, a “heavenly messenger” born of virgin birth, who came from the north to bring peace and unity to the Five Nations in a time of great turmoil. The people were caught up in an endless cycle of blood feuds and revenge, and Dekanahwideh — together with his disciple Hiawatha — travelled from nation to nation, urging an end to the conflict. In its place, they proposed a Great Law of Peace that would bring the various nations “under one roof,” like the families in a longhouse.

Slowly, and with great public debate, Dekanahwideh and Hiawatha managed to convince each of the five nations to join. The Mohawk were the first to accept, and thus were known as “the elder brothers” of the Confederacy. As a symbol of the new union, Dekanahwideh planted a great white pine, the Tree of Peace, beneath which he buried a war club. The roots of the great tree were depicted as spreading in all directions, and on top of the tree sat an eagle, ever vigilant.

Note:There is no connection between Hiawatha, co-founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the character with the same name who appears in the poem The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (It appears that Longfellow got the real Hiawatha mixed up with the Native folk hero Nanabozho.)

The Great Law of Peace was, in effect, the working constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. And because the Iroquois, like all First Nations, had no written alphabet, the entire law was passed on orally from one generation to the next for hundreds of years. No small feat, that. It was the equivalent of memorizing a 75,000-word book, longer than many of today’s novels. (Imagine having to memorize and recite The English Patient — again and again.)

As a memory aid, elders used a system of woven bands of shells, called wampum belts, to help guide their recitations. The centrally located Onondaga were designated the “wampum keepers,” making them, in today’s terms, the keepers of the public archives.

Romans of the New World

The Iroquois Nations have been dubbed “the Romans of the New World.” They imposed their will upon a vast expanse of territory, they waged a series of apocalyptic wars against their neighbours, and they fought the French to a standstill. Feared in battle and ruthless in victory, the Five Nations eventually overran and destroyed all of their Iroquoian neighbours: the Huron, the Neutral, the Petun, the Mahican, and the Erie. Crippled by smallpox epidemics and demoralized by the constant attacks, one by one they fell under the might of the Iroquois Confederacy.

A confusion of names

The Mohawk aren’t the only Native group to get their name confused or misapplied. The Huron referred to themselves as the Wendat. (Huron came from French slang meaning “ruffian” or “scruffy.”) And, of course, the term “Indian” itself is a misnomer, mistakenly applied by Columbus in 1492 when he thought he had landed in the Indies.

Because this book is meant as a beginner’s guide, I have used the more common or familiar versions of Native names. These are the ones you are more likely to encounter (in the same way that you will encounter “Germany” more often than Deutschland, or “Japan” more often than Nippon).

Here are some other examples:

History as living artifact: False Faces and corn husk masks

Two distinctive types of mask, one woven from husks and the other carved directly into a living tree and then “freed,” were central to Iroquoian healing rituals. The wooden False Face masks were often wildly and even comically distorted, with bent noses and protruding lips. Along with the more abstract husk masks, they represented good spirits with magical curative powers. At various times of the year, members of the False Face Society would visit homes, dancing, chanting, and tending to the ill — and in return they would receive offerings of tobacco and corn meal.

These masks have a deep religious significance even now, and they still play a key role in the ceremonies of today’s Iroquois traditionalists, who are often upset at seeing False Faces displayed in public museums. Less reverential Iroquois entrepreneurs carve “false faces” for sale as souvenirs. To be authentic, these masks must be cut from living wood and blessed with a ceremonial burning of tobacco. When I asked a Mohawk carver recently whether the tourist-bought False Face masks have been properly sanctified in this manner, he just smiled . . .

Whenever Iroquoian warriors (Five Nations, Huron, and Neutral alike) captured prisoners in battle, they tortured them in a gruesome, prolonged, public spectacle that could last for days, after which the captors performed ritualized cannibalism, eating the heart of the captive if he had been particularly brave.

Of the Iroquois, none had as fierce or as feared a reputation as the Mohawk. Indeed, Mohawk is not their original name. They called themselves Kahniakehaka, “People of the Flint Country.” But to their long-suffering neighbours, they were mowak — “eaters of men.” The name, rendered by Europeans as “Mohawk,” has stuck ever since, so much so that it is even used by today’s Mohawk when referring to themselves.

Clan mothers and faithkeepers

Like the Vikings, the Iroquois, although fearsome in battle, had a quiet home life. Their society was remarkably stable and well integrated. Iroquoian cultures were matrilineal. That is, both the larger clans and the extended families of the longhouse traced their descent along their mothers’ side. Women wielded real power: Women owned the land (or, more accurately, acted as “caretakers”), and men protected it. The chiefs may have been men, but the women held the balance of power. (The Clan Mothers chose the members of the Grand Council of Chiefs and if any leader failed to follow the dictates of the Great Law, he could be removed by the Clan Mothers.)

TheIroquois, in essence, lived in a representative democracy, with votes given to the delegates of each Nation, and a unanimous decision needed to go to war (although the Nations often went to war separately as well). The main town of the Onondaga, the largest and most central of the Nations, acted as the capital of the Confederacy, a hub community where diplomacy and long-term strategy were hammered out.

Along with the Council of Chiefs and the Clan Mothers, Iroquois society also had a system of Faithkeepers and shamans responsible for attending to the spiritual and health-related needs of the community. The distinction between medicine and magic was never clearly drawn, and the same healer who had an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs would also exorcise evil spirits from ill bodies.

People of the North Woods

The forests of the Canadian Shield cut an immense swath across Canada, from what is now northern Québec, across Ontario, all the way to the Northwest Territories. In the north woods, the soil is thin and the land is rugged. Unlike their southern Iroquoian neighbours, the people of Canada’s north woods lived a nomadic life based around small kinship bands. They were neither farmers nor politically united. Indeed, decentralization was the key to their survival. They lived in domed, bark-covered structures known as wigwams, which held only one or two families.

Two broad language groups are found in this vast area:

In the northwest, the Athapaskan (including the Kutchin, Dogrib, Beaver, and Chipewyan — all of whom are also referred to as Dene).

In the southeast, the Algonquian (including the Cree, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and on the Atlantic coast, the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq).

On the coast

Although the Algonquian language group was located mainly in the northern woodlands, it did stretch all the way to the Atlantic. The Mi’kmaq (also spelled Micmac) were the dominant Native group in what is now the Maritimes. They lived in semi-nomadic communities along the coast from Gaspé to Nova Scotia, and later migrated to Newfoundland as well. The Mi’kmaq were among the very first Native groups to encounter the Europeans, and as such, were the first to experience the upheaval and displacement that inevitably followed.

The Mi’kmaq, along with the Maliseet in the Bay of Fundy region, befriended the early French settlers and allied themselves against the British. The British, in response, waged a brutal but unsuccessful war of extermination against them. (See Chapter 6 for more on this period.) Governor Cornwallis, the founder of Halifax, put a bounty on Mi’kmaq scalps and even brought in Mohawk mercenaries to help “eradicate” them. This is one of the reasons the present-day Mi’kmaq were less than enthusiastic when the City of Halifax decided to celebrate its Founding Father a few years ago.

The canoe as Canadian icon

The Natives of the north woods, and the Ojibwa in particular, were renowned for their elegant yet practical river-going craft. The birchbark canoe — light, easily repaired, and able to carry heavy loads — made extensive trade possible. It was the canoe that opened up the interior of Canada. Like the snowshoe and the toboggan, the birchbark canoe is a wonder of adaptive technology. And Canada, explored and exploited largely by river, was a nation born of the canoe. Ours is a country that was opened up by dogged explorers and foolhardy fur traders who rode rivers and crossed lakes and fought their way through white waters to reach the interior.

From the image of the early voyageurs in their great flotillas to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, paddling with the current in buckskin and beads, the image of the canoe, and the communion with nature that it suggests, has been adopted — or appropriated, depending on your point of view — by Canadians as a whole.

Canada is a canoe route.

— aphorism attributed to historian Arthur Lower

The wild man of the forest

For the Iroquois, cannibalism was a war ritual. But for the subsistence-level small-band societies of the northern woods, where starvation was a constant and real danger, cannibalism was looked upon with horror as the final breakdown of order. The most dreaded figure in Cree and Ojibwa mythology was the Windigo, an evil spirit who took possession of people’s souls and led them into wild, anti-social behaviour — especially cannibalism. For some commentators, the Windigo has also come to represent a darker, underlying fear that has haunted non-Native Canadians for years: the image of a person who, “having spent too long in the wilderness, becomes a part of it.” Northrop Frye saw this as a symptom of a larger “garrison mentality,” a sense of living under siege, surrounded by the forces of nature. A very Canadian neurosis.

History as living artifact: The dreamcatcher

Central to the Ojibwa way of life was the Midewiwin religion, in which it was believed that the Earth was a living, interconnected whole. Every plant and animal contained a life force, and this in turn was connected to the concept of Manitou, usually translated as “Great Spirit” or, more accurately, as simply “Mystery.” It refers to the unseen realities of life, beyond human understanding, but always present and very real. (The province of Manitoba is named in reference to this.)

Dreams were a contact point between the everyday world and the Manitou, and one of the best known Ojibwa artifacts — and one that has been adopted by other First Nations as well — is the dreamcatcher. Who knows, you may even have one hanging above your bed. They have become very popular lately, though not everyone who buys one understands its underlying significance.

Dreamcatchers invite good dreams in and “ensnare” bad ones. They also protect against illness and evil spirits. A baby’s first protective talisman was a dreamcatcher, an intricate and finely woven web adorned with feathers, either owl (for wisdom) or eagle (for courage). In most dreamcatchers, a hole in the centre is left open to allow the good dreams to pass through, while blocking the bad ones. (In other Native cultures, it is just the opposite: The hole allows bad ideas and dreams to pass through and “catches” the good ones.)

A northern empire

The Ojibwa (also Ojibwe and Ojibway) were the primary middlemen in the aboriginal fur trade, and they controlled the widest Native territory north of Mexico. The Ojibwa were, in their own way, “the Romans of the north woods.” Part of a coalition known as the Council of the Three Fires, the Ojibwa moved south after the Fall of the Huron Confederacy, and later pushed west as well, displacing the Sioux — no small feat, considering what worthy opponents the Sioux were. In the words of historian J.M. MacDonald, the Ojibwa controlled “one of the largest Indian territories in history — an empire that stretched from southern Ontario and Wisconsin to Saskatchewan and western Montana.” The Ojibwa are also sometimes referred to as “Chippewa,” which gets really confusing because it sounds so similar to Chipewyan, which is an Athapaskan Native group with no connection to the Ojibwa.

People of the Plains

Quick! Close your eyes and — wait, don’t close your eyes. Instead, just picture in your mind an “Indian.” Odds are, you conjured up an image of someone from the plains, probably Sioux, dressed in buckskin, wearing a feathered headdress, perhaps riding a horse and firing a rifle at buffalo or — even better — at the U.S. Cavalry. The Plains Indians are, after all, the stuff of Hollywood mythmaking. These are the Dances with Wolves Indians, the ones who have come to represent the image of Native North Americans as a whole. Which makes it all the more ironic that the short-lived heyday of the Plains Indians was made possible almost solely because of two items introduced by the Europeans: the horse and the repeating rifle.

Of these, the horse was by far the more important. First acquired from Spaniards far to the south, they were traded north, arriving in the Canadian West in the mid-1700s. The horse changed everything. It gave the Indians greater freedom, greater speed, and better mobility. It also allowed them to expand the range of the hunt — and the range of their wars. With the horse, the People of the Plains attained a brief and brilliant ascendancy, one that lasted just a little over 100 years, but that would burn itself forever into the popular imagination. (The Spanish actually re-introduced the horse to the New World. Horses had existed in North America in pre-historic times, but had long-since been hunted into extinction.)

On the high plains, the most powerful presence was that of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The Confederacy waged war with and against the Plains Cree and Assiniboine to the north and east, and the Sioux and Crow to the south. It was an austere, militant culture, one described by historian Arthur Ray as “extremely macho.” If the Iroquois were the Romans of the New World, the Plains Indians were the Spartans.

The buffalo hunt

The People of the Plains were hunters. Their homes — tipis of raised poles and hides — could be taken down and put up quickly, and the mainstay of both their diet and their way of life was the buffalo. Great herds roamed the plains, often covering the horizon, and the buffalo (or, more correctly, bison) provided meat, robes, glue, sinew, and bowstrings. The hides were used for tipis, blankets, moccasins, and portable “bull boats” used in crossing streams. The dried dung was used for fuel. The ribs were used as sled runners, the hollowed horns as drinking goblets, the bladders as water bags and the tails as flyswatters. It was once estimated that the Plains Indians had over 300 different uses for buffalo. The buffalo were, in a way, “walking supermarkets.”

Now, there were several ways to kill them. You could build a long fenced-in area that was wide on one end and narrowed toward the other, a “buffalo pound,” and then corral the animals into it. Or you could ride alongside them and shoot them full of arrows, a difficult and dangerous undertaking. Or you could simply run them off a cliff.