Groundwork for modern Alberta laid in the century preceding 1905 confederation as a province of Canada
by Rob Alexander
The year 1905 marks an important event in Alberta's history, as it joined Canadian Confederation as a province. The past 100 years have set Alberta on its path to what the province is today, and during that time Albertans have seen a great deal of change. But practically everything that defines Alberta today took place between 1805 and 1905.
Alberta underwent a fundamental shift between 1805 and 1905, as the land transitioned from the First Nations to Euro-Canadians.
The century started with the fur trade becoming more established throughout western Canada, as both the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company pushed their trading empires to the edge of the Rocky Mountains. The mountains, however, still presented a formidable barrier to trade.
In the fall of 1805, Simon Fraser, a fur trader and explorer with the North West Company, crossed the Rocky Mountains by following the Peace River route. Fraser was only the second European, after Alexander Mackenzie in 1793, to cross the Rocky Mountains.
A Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive makes its way through the Canadian Rockies, ca. 1880s. The arrival of the railway signaled the true start of settlement and development in Alberta, and the very start of tourism for this scenic area.
Explorers like Mackenzie and Fraser slowly began to unravel the secrets of the mountains and the wilds of Alberta. Their discoveries, such as the Athabasca Pass and the Fraser River in British Columbia became the backbone of the fur trade routes followed by the Coureur Des Bois, the legendary voyageurs, as they shuttled trade goods west and furs east.
Competition between the two fur trading companies was so fierce it eventually boiled over into all out warfare, with the traders killing one another in raids and small-scale battles. The violence and competition ended when the two companies merged in 1821 under the flag of the HBC.
For the native people of the Plains and woodlands of the West, the fur trade had become an integral part of their lives, as it gave them access to coveted trade goods, including metal pots and tools, blankets and the all-important rifle.
The fur trade and early exploration carried on side-by-side in relative peace until the 1820s, when discontent among the Blackfoot Nation began to threaten what was generally a peaceful coexistence between the fur trade and the native people. The fiercely territorial Blackfoot began to resent the white man intruding into their lands, which consisted of much of southern Alberta. They did not object to the fur trade, for they benefited from having the trade goods, especially rifles, but having white men in Blackfoot territory building trading posts and trapping animals was not welcome.
Warfare and conflict was an integral part of life in the West. Rivalries and hatred had always run deep among the tribes and each had its traditional enemies and allies. The availability of guns, including American repeating rifles, and the diminishing herds of bison, contributed to a greater level of violence.
The warfare grew in intensity after the 1820s and continued through to 1870, when the last battle on Alberta soil occurred. A large group of Cree and Assiniboine raided a Blood camp, killing many of the inhabitants and stealing a number of horses. Peigan camped nearby heard the shots and raced to their ally's defense. The Peigan slaughtered between 200 and 300 Cree and Assiniboine as they crossed the St. Mary's River immediately adjacent to what is now Lethbridge. That incident marked the end of tribal warfare in Alberta.
Also in 1870, American whiskey traders began to press further into Alberta as the reign of the HBC drew to a close. The company had sold its rights to the lands west of the Hudson Bay to the new Canadian government, created three years earlier.
The gap in governance left the land wide open for the whiskey traders to ply their trade from posts such as Fort Whoop-Up in southern Alberta.
Even the powerful Blackfoot nation began to crumble as its people traded anything they had of value for whiskey.
But the nefarious doings of these traders did not go unnoticed. Recognizing the increasing lawlessness in the West, along with a greater threat of invasion from the United States, the government of Canada created a police force in 1874 and ordered it west to deal with the increasing problems.
The North West Mounted Police (NWMP), 275 strong, began the long march across Canada under scorching prairie skies and pounding storms with an entourage that included horses, cattle, guns, wagons and even early threshing machines. The force was also inexperienced and many of its members were so green they did not even know how to ride a horse. More than a few slipped away under the cover of darkness to escape the hell they had willingly signed on for.
Even though the conditions were often brutal, the NWMP was kept as a cohesive unit by strong leadership from its commanding officers, who were larger-than-life career soldiers.
Once in Alberta, the NWMP spread out and immediately began to suppress the whiskey trade. Impressed by the speed, efficiency and determination of the NWMP, the Native people generally responded with respect and trust for the red-coated men of the force, a situation completely opposite to events in the United States that often ended violently with clashes between U.S military troops and American Natives.
Surprisingly, hostilities towards the white man never fully erupted in Alberta, even though Montana's Sioux nation urged the western tribes in the late-1870s to set aside their hatred for each other and sweep the West clean of any European influence.
Instead, Crowfoot, the Blackfoot chief, counseled peace. The Mounties had saved his people from the devastating effects of alcohol, a task Crowfoot had not been able to accomplish. He also knew the lives of aboriginal people were at a cusp and soon their reign of the West would end. The great herds of bison were already being over hunted and white settlers were beginning to work their way west.
However, a large group of Sioux, 4,000 strong finally released their pent up rage and frustration with the U.S. treaties and killed General Custer and 275 men under his command at the Battle of Little Bighorn. After this decisive battle, the Sioux fled north and crossed the border to take up temporary residence in the Cypress Hills of Southern Alberta, much too close to their traditional enemies - Alberta's Cree, Assiniboine and the Blackfoot Confederacy - for their liking.
With tension between the Sioux and their Alberta neighbours growing, a small force of NWMP marched south to diffuse this dangerous situation - 100 men to the Sioux's 4,000.
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This 1877 painting by A. Bruce Stapleton, now in the Glenbow Museum Art Collection, depicts the Blackfoot Treaty. Crowfoot, the Blackfoot chief, addresses the group: at left standing is Major Irvine; next to him in buckskin is interpreter Jean L'Heureux. Seated are Colonel Macleod and Lieutenant Governor Laird, in civilian dress. At right is Crowfoot, with interpreter beside him.
The fact that the Mounties kept the peace and convinced the Sioux to leave Alberta without a shot fired is a testament to the courage and ability of the NWMP, or as Alberta historian James G. MacGregor wrote in 1972, it was one of the "...greatest tests of courage and in one of the most dramatic demonstrations of competence and worth ever exhibited by any police force..."
Sitting Bull has to be given credit for the outcome, for if the command had been given, the Mounties would have been wiped out.
The Mounties' ability to handle these incredibly complex situations with courage and respect led Alberta's tribes to accept the treaties in 1876 with the Canadian government. In exchange for their land, Natives were guaranteed certain rights and entitled to special privileges.
However, it must be noted that while the relationship between the NWMP and the Native people was one of mutual respect, often based on action and strong leadership on the part of the Mounties, for the most part the NWMP held the same paternalistic views of the government that the Native people were nothing better than children.
What tribal warfare and the whiskey trade did not accomplish, diseases such as measles and smallpox, brought to the West by the Europeans, decimated Native populations, which eventually made it easier for the Canadian government to open the West to settlement and development.
With the aboriginal people settled on their respective reserves, the West was officially open to settlement and development.
A great era in Canada's history came to a close, and the next chapter would bring the Native cultures to the brink of complete collapse. The reservation system took nomadic people, forced them into small areas of their former homes, stripped them of their heritage, language, culture and religion and turned them into wards of the state, completely dependent on the government.
In the end, Alberta's Native people bowed to the Canadian government, their hearts and wills crushed by starvation. By the 1880s, the herds of bison the Plains tribes had relied on were all but extinct.
Settlement and Development
Alberta had not been devoid of settlement leading up to and following the shift of power from Natives to Euro-Canadian hands. By 1881, Alberta had a population of 1,000 non-natives, while Edmonton was nearly 100 years old (founded in 1795). Communities had sprung up alongside the fur trading posts and NWMP forts. Missionaries had built missions at Pigeon Lake, near Edmonton and at Morley.
Those 1,000 people had trickled into the region. The next wave would start as a trickle as well, but it would become a flood in the latter part of the 1800s as Canada began eyeing ways to settle and secure its hold on the West.
In an effort to fill the West, the government began a broad marketing campaign in Europe, a move not eagerly anticipated by the ranchers who had begun raising cattle where bison used to roam.
But to facilitate settlement, Canada needed a railway.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was awarded the task of building the first trans-continental railway in the early 1880s. Hundreds of surveyors fanned out across the West, following in the tracks of the early explorers as they laid down the path the railway would take. The work gangs appeared next, transforming the landscape as they laid down the steel rails.
The railhead reached the Rockies in the fall of 1883. By November, the railway was complete and the development phase of Alberta's early history was about to begin. Spur lines soon branched north and south and as the need to power the locomotives grew, a number of coalmines were started in the Rocky Mountains, the Crowsnest Pass and at Lethbridge.
The early 1880s also saw the rise of logging and milling for growing population centres in need of building materials. One of Alberta's first commercial sawmills was started along the Bow River near Exshaw in 1883 by Col. James Walker, a retired NWMP officer. He later moved the mill to Calgary.
Alberta's first economic force, the fur trade, was not dead, but compared to its heyday it had diminished. It was in this later stage that Alberta began to establish its future image: oil and gas, ranching, farming and, of course, tourism.
Oil and gas, one of Alberta's major industries, was first utilized in 1890 when a gas well was tapped near Fort Macleod and by 1903, the residents of that burgeoning town had natural gas piped into their homes.
As the other industries began to build, farming began to grow in importance as the settlers finally arrived, drawn by offers of free land. They often came in large, organized religious or cultural groups that set to work breaking the ground to get at the rich prairie soil.
Slowly these first-generation farmers began to spread across the arable portion of Alberta, primarily the southeast quadrant of the province, some 70,000 acres in total.
The discovery of hot springs near Banff in 1883 while the railroad was being built led to the creation of Canada's first, and most popular, national park. The combination of the mountain setting and the hot springs proved to be a strong draw as tourists immediately began to arrive in large numbers, just as they do today. By 1895, Alberta's population had grown to about 30,000 people; six years later, the population had doubled to over 73,000 people.
With the growing population and increasing industrialization, the provisional government of the District of Alberta, part of Canada's North West Territories, began to push for full membership in Confederation, and all the rights and privileges that being a province entailed.
The Federal government passed the Alberta Act in 1905, creating the Province of Alberta. Half of the District of Athabasca was added to the land base of this new province to practically double its size, giving it 661,190 square kilometres of land. Alberta is 1,223 km long, stretching north from the U.S./ Canada border.
Alberta was chosen by Canada's Governor General, the Marquis de Lorne, in honour of his wife, Princess Caroline, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria.
Rob Alexander lives and writes in Canmore. Watch for his centennial history of the Province of Alberta, 1905 to present, in the next edition of SolaraLife.
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