"After 200 years of adapting to mercantile capitalism and casual wage-labour within the general context of their own subsistence economies and cultures, Aboriginal people were suddenly expected to change almost every aspect of their lives. The numbered treaties of the 1870s, and the way that their provisions were applied by Dominion officials, made it clear that the Aboriginal peoples of Manitoba, Keewatin, and the North-West Territory were expected to forsake their nomadic existence, settle down on reserves, and, wherever possible, become agricultural producers. Local Indian agents and their superiors also expected them to emulate white settlers who augmented their farm incomes during the first years on the land with brief forays into the wage-labour market, working as fishermen, lumberjacks, construction workers, transportation labourers, farmhands, or miners, depending on the opportunities available in any given area. In short, the Aboriginal people were expected to become simultaneously sturdy yeoman farmers and members of a reserve army of labour.
The dramatic changes in lifestyle required to conform to these new economic roles would have been difficult to accomplish even if they were practical or welcomed. However, neither the unsuitability of the land on most reserves for agriculture, nor the natural reluctance of any group of people to submit themselves to new work disciplines and new cultural imperatives, deterred the government from pressing on with its experiment in social engineering.
This ill-conceived and poorly funded experiment was disastrous for northern peoples. With the exception of a few reserves in the south, any form of agriculture beyond growing hardy root vegetables and hay was impractical. To make matters worse, until 1877 an unscrupulous official of the Indian Branch had sent nothing but inferior-quality implements, cattle, and other treaty provisions to the reserves, so that he and his friends could realize an illegal profit on such goods. Equipped with poor land and, in many cases, with useless implements and poor quality animals, the Aboriginal peoples' attempts at agriculture were doomed from the outset. Then came the natural disasters of the 1880s when floods, early frosts, and drought took their toll, proving to many people that agriculture was not for them or might, at best, be a supplement to older economic activities.
The other "approved" economic activity—that of casual wage-labour—was more practical. From the 1870s to the 1890s, the various bands within the Manitoba Superintendency found work in a broad array of enterprises. Sawmills and bush camps employed hundreds of Cree and Ojibwa men in the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg regions. Railroad construction work and the associated tie cutting were also common Aboriginal occupations during the early 1880s. Miners employed a fair number of Aboriginal people as guides, transportation workers, timber cutters, and general labourers during the Lake of the Woods gold rush of the 1880s. In the Portage la Prairie and Selkirk areas, white farmers commonly hired large numbers of Aboriginal people as harvesters throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Fishing companies found the men and women of lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba an excellent source of low-cost shore labour, but they also discovered that by bringing up supplies of trade goods to exchange for fish taken by the people working in the inshore fishery, they could multiply their profits through shrewd bartering. The HBC and its subsidiary transportation firm at Grand Rapids made extensive use of Cree labour along the tramway, and also employed Aboriginal people as cordwood cutters, fishers, and, of course, as trappers throughout the district. The forays of GSC parties, railway surveyors, and transient missionaries also provided a limited amount of work for Aboriginal people as guides, paddlers, hunters, and interpreters.
In most cases, these forms of labour were familiar to the Aboriginals. Sometimes they were direct outgrowths of older activities that followed pre-industrial patterns of time-work discipline, being governed by the changing seasons, by the amount of sunlight, and by the accomplishment of tasks whose final goal was always in sight. Most of these jobs either were available close to home, in areas where whole families and bands could camp nearby, or were of short enough duration that the workers did not have to spend too much time away from the family and band. Thus, these jobs were more attractive than the foreign and frustrating occupation of farming, fitting readily into the older patterns of Aboriginal economic and social life, with the added incentive of immediate payments in cash or trade goods.
Still, most of these jobs were short term. No sooner would a band become reliant on a sawmill for winter employment than market conditions would force the mill out of business, or the merchantable timber would be cut over and the mill owner would move the operation to another location, leaving the local people with no work. The other economic enterprises along the resource frontier were equally unstable. Railroad work ended when the section nearest the reserve was completed. Mines, especially hard-rock gold mines, had notoriously short lives in the nineteenth century and could not be counted on for steady employment. The demand for farm labour only existed in the southern part of the Manitoba Superintendency and was extremely variable, being dependent on the size of the crop and the prosperity of local farmers. Fishing was a more certain form of employment but, by the late 1880s and early 1890s, the large fishing concerns were showing a marked preference for white sailors and "independent" white fishermen, leaving Aboriginal people the poor-paying shore jobs. Employment at the Grand Rapids tramway and as fuel-wood cutters for steamers on Lake Winnipeg also became less stable during the 1880s and 1890s as the northern transportation route fell into disuse. Finally, guiding, paddling, and interpreting were episodic and could not be counted on for regular employment.
Still, for all the drawbacks associated with these forms of employment, the Aboriginal people actively sought them out. As Indian Department officials discovered in the 1880s, many Aboriginals preferred staying at their jobs at treaty time, so as not to lose their income from lumbering, fishing, or transportation work, even if it meant missing annuity payments.
Ironically, this preference for short-term wage labour over farming was a constant source of irritation to many Indian agents. Given the problems of farming on the reserves of treaties 2, 3, and 5, one could hardly blame the people for seeking livelihoods that would complement their trapping, hunting, and fishing activities. But this was exactly what irritated Indian agents and missionaries, for they did not want their "charges" to subsidize a nomadic way of life with their earnings. Rather, they wanted "their people" to settle down on the reserves year-round and concentrate their energies, and earnings, on agriculture, animal husbandry, and fishing. The Grand Rapids Cree, for example, were often attacked in the agents' annual reports for their preference for the "easy" life of seasonal work as labourers, cordwood cutters, and fishers. By adopting an agricultural lifestyle, the missionaries believed, the Aboriginals would be more receptive to Christianity, European-style education, and a general move towards "civilization." The government believed that once these goals were accomplished, the Aboriginal people would then be ready for full integration into the larger white society, and the reserves, and all the expenses entailed in their maintenance, could be done away with."
- Jim Mochoruk, Formidable Heritage: Manitoba's North and the Cost of Development, 1870 to 1930. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2004. p. 53-56.
