The Mtis[edit]

Main article: Mtis people (Canada) The Mtis (from French mtis "mixed") are descended of marriages of Cree, Ojibway, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Menominee, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and other First Nations in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries[50] to Europeans,[51] mainly French.[52] According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the Mtis were historically the children of French fur traders and Nehiyaw women or, from unions of English or Scottish traders and Northern Dene women (Anglo-Mtis). The Mtis spoke or still speak either Mtis French or a mixed language called Michif. Michif, Mechif or Mtchif is a phonetic spelling of the Mtis pronunciation of Mtif, a variant of Mtis. The Mtis as of 2013 predominantly speak English, with French a strong second language, as well as numerous Aboriginal tongues. Mtis French is best preserved in Canada, Michif in the United States, notably in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of North Dakota, where Michif is the official language of the Mtis that reside on this Chippewa reservation. The encouragement and use of Mtis French and Michif is growing due to outreach within the provincial Mtis councils after at least a generation of steep decline. Canada's Indian and Northern Affairs define Mtis to be those persons of mixed First Nation and European ancestry.[53]

Colonial Wars[edit]
Main articles: French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War, and Father Le Loutre's War

Conference between the French and First Nations leaders.

Allied with the French, the first nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia fought six colonial wars against the British and their native allies (See the French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre's War). [54] In the second war, Queen Anne's War, the British conquered Acadia (1710). The sixth and final colonial war between the nations of France and Great Britain (1754-1763), resulted in the British conquest of Canada. In this final war, the Franco-Indian alliance brought together American and Canadian First Nations and the French, centred on the Great Lakes and the Illinois Country.[55] The alliance involved French settlers on the one side, and on the other side were the Abenaki, Odawa, Menominee, HoChunk (Winnebago), Mississaugas, Illiniwek, Huron-Petun,Potawatomi etc.[55] It allowed the French and the Indians to form a haven in the middle-Ohio valley before the open conflict between the European powers erupted.[56]

Slavery[edit]
Main article: Slavery in Canada First Nations routinely captured slaves from neighbouring tribes. The conditions under which such slaves lived were much more humane than the conditions endured by African peoples forcibly brought as chattel by

Europeans to the Americas. Slave-owning tribes of the fishing societies, such as the Yurok andHaida lived along the coast from what is now Alaska to California.[57] Fierce warrior indigenous slave-traders of the Pacific Northwest Coast raided as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war and their descendants. Among Pacific Northwest tribes about a quarter of the population were slaves. [58] The citizens of New France received slaves as gifts from their allies among First Nations peoples. Slaves were prisoners taken in raids against the villages of the Fox nation, a tribe that was an ancient rival of the Miami people and their Algonquian allies.[59] Native (or "pani", a corruption of Pawnee) slaves were much easier to obtain and thus more numerous than African slaves in New France, but were less valued. The average native slave died at 18, and the average African slave died at 25[58] (the average European could expect to live until the age of 35[60]). By 1790 the abolition movement was gaining ground in Canada and the ill intent of slavery was evidenced by an incident involving a slave woman being violently abused by her slave owner on her way to being sold in the United States.[58] The Act Against Slavery of 1793 legislated the gradual abolition of slavery: no slaves could be imported; slaves already in the province would remain enslaved until death, no new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, and children born to female slaves would be slaves but must be freed at age 25.[58] The Act remained in force until 1833 when the British Parliament's Slavery Abolition Act finally abolished slavery in all parts of the British Empire.[61] Historian Marcel Trudel has documented 4,092 recorded slaves throughout Canadian history, of which 2,692 were Aboriginal people, owned by the French, and 1,400 blacks owned by the British, together owned by approximately 1,400 masters.[58] Trudel also noted 31 marriages took place between French colonists and Aboriginal slaves.[58]

17751815[edit]

Fur traders in Canada, trading with First Nations, 1777

British agents worked to make the first nations into military allies of the British, providing supplies, weapons, and encouragement. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) most of the tribes supported the British. In 1779, the Americans launched a campaign to burn the villages of the Iroquois in New York State.[62] The refugees fled to Fort Niagara and other British posts, and remained permanently in Canada. Although the British ceded the Old Northwest to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, it kept fortifications and trading posts in the region until 1795. The British then evacuated American territory, but operated trading posts in British territory, providing weapons and encouragement to tribes that were resisting American expansion into such areas as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. [63] Officially, the British agents discouraged any warlike activities or raids on American settlements, but the Americans became increasingly angered, and this became one of thecauses of the War of 1812.[64] In the war, the great majority of First Nations supported the British, and many fought under the aegis ofTecumseh.[65] But Tecumseh died in battle in 1813 and the Indian coalition collapsed. The British had long wished to create a neutral Indian state in the American Old Northwest,[66] and made this demand as late as

1814 at the peace negotiations at Ghent. The Americans rejected the idea, the British dropped it, and Britain's Indian allies lost British support. In addition, the Indians were no longer able to gather furs in American territory. Abandoned by their powerful sponsor, Great Lakes-area natives ultimately assimilated into American society, migrated to the west or to Canada, or were relocated onto reservations in Michigan and Wisconsin.[67] Historians have unanimously agreed that the Indians were the major losers in the War of 1812.[68]