The Numbered Treaties were a series of eleven bilateral agreements between the Canadian government and the First Nations, signed between 1871 and 1921 as settlements moved westward; they cover most of modern-day Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories. While they were positive in the short run, allowing for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and for expanded settlement, they were short-sighted and left a number of issues unaddressed; the fallout from these omissions is still being felt.

Since Jacques Cartier first set foot in the St. Lawrence River valley, the First Nations people had been important allies of the area's French explorers and colonists. Much of the success of their colony, New France, was dependent on trade with the Algonquin and later the Huron; this stood in fairly stark contrast with the relationship between the settlers in the Thirteen Colonies (already beginning to break away from Great Britain) and the indigenous peoples there, who seemed constantly at odds with each other.

In the British Maritime colonies, the relationship was considerably less tense: from 1725 in what are now the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the colonial government had made a number of "Peace and Friendship" treaties with the local Mi'kmaq and Maliseet tribes, while the French and Indian Wars saw territory change hands again and again.

With the end of the Seven Years War (also called the French and Indian War, when referencing the events in North America), Britain established itself as the main colonial power in North America. New France was officially ceded to Britain in 1762; this was followed in 1763 by a Royal Proclamation that detailed how the newly-acquired territory and its inhabitants would be handled.

One section of the Royal Proclamation set aside the Ohio Valley as Indian territory, prohibiting the sale of the land to any party other than the Crown, and even then only if a consensus was reached at a public meeting. This agreement was one of the first to recognise the idea of First Nations land titles; it also proved that coming to a bilateral agreement was possible, and might even be an extant way to open up the rest of the continent peacefully.

In 1867, the British North America Act (now the Confederation Act) united Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec into a single country. It also gave the newly-created federal government jurisdiction over the First Nations and their lands.

One of the government's first endeavours following Confederation was to build a transcontinental railway to connect the eastern provinces to the mostly-empty west, smoothing the way for settlement and expansion. In 1870, the vast expanse of Rupert's Land was purchased and transferred to Canada, where it became the postage-stamp province of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. The only problem was that the unsettled area through which the railroad was to be built was already inhabited by the First Nations, and they held the titles to the land.

To open up the west and gain access to the lands needed to build the railway -- as well as any resources that might be found along the way -- the government negotiated a series of eleven treaties with the First Nations peoples, beginning in 1871. These became known as the Numbered Treaties, and were signed over a period of fifty years; the last one was not finalised until 1921.

In negotiating these treaties, Crown policy was centred on acquiring new land for settlement as it was needed, without raising the ire of its inhabitants. Their prerogative was to "establish friendly relations" with the First Nations, with concessions made where they were necessary to keep the negotiations cordial and mutually beneficial, at least on the surface.

Treaty negotiations generally called for the surrender of tracts of Indian land in return for annual cash payments based on the population of the tribe with whom the agreement was being made, and were conducted following the oral traditions of the First Nations as closely as possible. Because of this cultural sensitivity, treaty negotiators are generally depicted as benevolent and meticulously well-intentioned, and the agreements they drew up for the Crown as having the best interests of the First Nations in mind.

Unfortunately, this was often not the case -- though it wasn't necessarily always the fault of the government, either. Despite the presence of translators, often Métis or of First Nations ancestry, details of the agreements as they were hammered out were lost in translation; many First Nations people believed that the treaties they signed left the land under their control, rather than ceding it to the government. The concepts of real estate and land ownership were foreign to many, and English legal terminology was difficult if not impossible to translate.

The treaties set aside an area of land within the tract ceded to serve as a reservation on which the First Nations people might live, the size of which was based on the number of people who would live there. Some, though not all, of the numbered treaties also included provisions for schools on the reserves, agricultural training and technology, annual cash payments to help with reservation upkeep, and gifts to tribal leaders as a show of respect and friendship.

By necessity, the provision of reservations included a clause that dictated who could and could not live on reserve land -- in effect, who was and was not an Indian. This was the forerunner of a similar clause in the Indian Act, created in 1876; it would spawn generations of discrimination that still hasn't been fully resolved.

Though the treaties covered most of Canada -- Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and parts of the Northwest Territories -- they failed to include all of the First Nations. No Inuit were ever consulted; neither were the First Nations around James Bay and northern British Columbia. The Métis were ignored entirely, adding insult to injury not long after the Red River Rebellion; their interests were not addressed until many years later.

Despite their drawbacks, the Numbered Treaties were successful in that they opened the west for settlement without the conflict seen in the United States, and enabled the construction of the railway. Their terms are still recognised today by the Canadian constitution.

A breakdown of the areas covered by each treaty:

• Treaty No. 1 - signed in 1871, covering 5 021 550 ha in southeast Manitoba
• Treaty No. 2 - signed in 1871, covering 8,676,828 ha in southwest and central Manitoba, and part of southeast Saskatchewan
• Treaty No. 3 - signed in 1873, covering 12,577,592 ha of southwest Ontario and eastern Manitoba
• Treaty No. 4 - signed in 1874, covering 19,229,405 ha of southern and south-central Saskatchewan
• Treaty No. 5 - signed in 1875, covering 16,483,254 ha of northern Manitoba; expanded in 1908 to include more area, totalling 33,840,725 ha.
• Treaty No. 6 - signed in 1876, covering 29,866,812 ha of central Alberta and Saskatchewan. Expanded in 1889 to include a small additional section of Saskatchewan, now totalling 3,208,039 ha.
• Treaty No. 7 - signed in 1877, covering 10,750,242 ha across most of southern Alberta.
• Treaty No. 8 - signed in 1899, covering 84,458,419 ha in northern Alberta, northeastern British Columbia, and the Mackenzie River area.
• Treaty No. 9 - signed in 1905, covering 22,786,567 ha in central Ontario south and southwest of James Bay, extending to the border with Quebec. This was expanded as the James Bay Treaty no. 9, in 1929-1930 to encompass the area around James Bay itself such that it covered a total area of 35,432,882 ha; this amendment falls outside the timeline for the Numbered Treaties, but is still considered to be one of them.
• Treaty No. 10 - signed in 1906, covering 20,394,512 ha in northeastern Saskatchewan
• Treaty No. 11 - signed in 1921, 97,051,325 ha encompassing most of what is now the Northwest Territories, as well as the eastern half of the Yukon Territory.

Sources:
Canada's First Nations: Treaty Evolution: Reasons for Negotiating and Signing the Prairie Treaties. University of Calgary. http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/firstnations/reasons.html (18 August 2004)
Displacement and Assimilation. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sg15_e.html (18 August 2004)
First Nations and Metis. http://collections.ic.gc.ca/Alberta/fn_metis/glossary.html (18 August 2004)
Numbered Treaties (1867-1923). Natural Resources Canada. http://www.atlas.gc.ca/maptexts/map_texts/english/trynum_e.html (18 August 2004)
Waite, P.B. Arduous Destiny: Canada 1874-1896. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971.
The areas covered by the treaties along with the years they were signed can be seen on maps at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/dfrp-rbif/treaty-traite.asp?Language=EN