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  • Table of Contents

    • Part 1: First Nations of the Peace River Region
    • Part 2: The Fur Trade Era
    • Part 3: Transportation and Communication
    • Part 4: Old Timers and the Price of Land
    • Part 5: Dawson Creek: The Story of the Community
    • Part 6: Mysteries, Adventures and Indian Legends
    • Part 7: Arts, Crafts and Recreation
    • Part 8: Agriculture
    • Part 9: Church Histories
    • Part 10: Schools
    • Part 11: Health Care
    • Part 12: Industries and Enterprises
    • Part 13: Policing the Peace
    • Part 14: Pouce Coupe, Rolla, and Other South Peace Communities
    • Part 15: Chetwynd and the Fort St. John Area
    • Part 16: The Alberta Peace
    • Part 17: Natural History of the Peace River Region
    • Part 18: Interviews with Old Timers
    • Part 19: Remembering Our Veterans

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01-122: THe “Sicanni” Chief’s Viewpoint on Taking Treaty, 1912

By Dorthea Calverley
In Sessional Paper No. 28 [1912, p.60] of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, Superintendent Sanders made an interesting comment about the “Sicanni” Indians around Fort Nelson.

“The Sicannis, a British Columbia tribe, near Fort Nelson and on the borders of my district, are reported truculent and averse to the advent of the white man. As mentioned by Inspector Field in his trip there last year, they refused to take treaty, and the old Sicanni chief in voicing this refusal, made the following speech: ‘God made the game and fur-bearing animals for the Indians and the money for the white people. My forefathers made their living in the country without the white man’s money and I and my people can do the same’.

Supt. Sanders goes on: ‘… should discoveries of minerals be made in the country in which these Indians hunt and prospectors go in, it is highly probably they would cause a lot of trouble’.

A large river, tributary to the Nelson River is named the “Sicanni Chief”. In the tales told to Prof. Ridington at the reserve at Halfway, it was said that “he wasn’t a Sicanni and he wasn’t a chief. We didn’t have chiefs in those days.” However it was the custom of the R.C.M.P. to recognize a headman as a “chief”. They were obliged to designate one leading Indian as a “chief” through whom they dealt with the whole band.

Also, the police were not always accurate in naming even the tribes they dealt with. A report in Sessional Paper No. 27 [1915, p. 84] says: “Another small band of the Stony Indians of a nomadic character who have been constantly traveling the western country until within the last four years in order to avoid treaty have now settled at Moberly Lake, a few miles south of St. Johns on the Dominion Lands reservation. They have built themselves good houses and now express a desire to come under treaty.” This band, as far as other records go, is identified as Saulteaux.

« 01-121: Treaty Records of British Columbia – The Peace River Indian Bands

01-123: Athapaskan Population, 1911 »

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