David Laird,
then Minister of the Interior, and Mr. W. J. Christie, of the
Hudson's Bay Company. Treaty No. 5 followed, with the cession of
100,000 square miles of territory, covering the Lake Winnipeg region,
etc., after which the Great Treaty (No.6), at Forts Carlton and
Pitt, in 1876, covering almost all the country drained by the two
Saskatchewans, was partly effected by Mr. Morris and his associates,
the recalcitrants being afterwards induced by Mr. Laird to adhere
to the treaty, with the exception of the notorious Big Bear, the
insurgent chief who figured so prominently in the Rebellion of 1885.
The final treaty, or No. 7, made with the Assiniboines and Blackfeet,
the most powerful and predatory of all our Plain Indians, was
concluded by Mr. Laird and the late Lieut.-Colonel McLeod in 1877.
By this last treaty had now been ceded the whole country from Lake
Winnipeg to the Rocky Mountains, and from the international boundary
to the District of Athabasca. But there remained in native hands
still that vast northern anticlinal, which differs almost entirely in
its superficial features from the prairies and plains to the south;
and it was this region, enormous in extent and rich in economic
resources, which, it was decided by Government, should now be placed
by treaty at the disposal of the Canadian people. To this end it was
determined that at Lesser Slave Lake the first conference should be
held, and the initial steps taken towards the cession of the whole
western portion of the unceded territory up to the 60th parallel of
north latitude.
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