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In late September 1877, representatives of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Canadian and British governments entered into a peace agreement at Blackfoot Crossing, sixty miles east of Fort Calgary. The Blackfoot Confederacy consisted of the Siksika, Piikani (Peigan), Kainaiwa (Blood), Tsuu T’ina (Sarcee), and the Stoney (Bearspaw, Chiniki, and Wesley/Goodstoney). Perceptions of the nature and importance of Treaty Seven vary. While the Canadian government perceived the treaty as a legal document that extinguished Aboriginal title to their land, members of the Blackfoot Confederacy understood the treaty process as a peacemaking venture – or, the forging of a new relationship. Today, Blackfoot elders argue that the written text of Treaty Seven did not encompass the "spirit or intent" of the treaty-making process. The Blackfoot Confederacy had hoped to ensure the physical survival of their people following the disappearance of the buffalo in the late 1870s. They also wished to eradicate the negative effects of the whisky trade on their people. In addition, they believed that establishing peaceful relations with the Canadian government would ensure their cultural and spiritual survival as a separate and distinct nation. While they would agree to share their land with incoming settlers, in return they would receive knowledge of new technologies, such as agriculture and stock raising. The Blackfoot Confederacy’s demands resulted in the Canadian government's willingness to grant them annuity payments, and to provide education, health care, ammunition, farming and ranching assistance, and the freedom to hunt. Treaty Seven also set aside one million acres for the Blackfoot Confederacy, creating the boundaries of present-day reservations in southern Alberta. The Tsuu T’ina became Calgary’s closest neighbours. The different personalities and cultures present at Blackfoot Crossing in 1877 contributed to misunderstandings, faulty translations, and misleading promises. While missionaries such as the Methodist John McDougall served as a liaison between the Stoneys and the Canadian government, government representatives like David Laird and Lieutenant-Colonel James Farquharson Macleod also followed their own agendas during treaty negotiations. Representative chiefs such as Issapo’mahkikaaw (Crowfoot), Ozija Thiba (Bearspaw), Sitting on Eagle Tail Feathers, Chula (Bull Head), and Mi’k ai’stowa (Red Crow) likewise pursued their own goals. Some historians and Treaty Seven elders have argued that it is questionable as to whether a "mutually understood" agreement could have been arrived at between a people representing a written culture and a people representing an oral culture. The Blackfoot, for instance, have no word for treaty in their language; they understood istisist aohkotspi as "the time when we made a sacred alliance." |
