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dominated the competition between European colonial powers on the North American continent. The second chapter shows how the British Empire was able to defeat France and establish a loyal colony in the North Americas. In the end of the third chapter this colony has developed into a “transcontinental, quasi-autonomous Dominion” still preserving strong ties to Great Britain (vii). Canada, after having loosened its ties to Britain, has found a new place on the world stage with an extraordinarily diverse population as Nelles claims in the last chapter. Nelles argues that each of the chapters ends at a point in Canadian history where a new stability had been reached and the next transformation was to change the country anew (vii). He emphasizes the process of transformation because he sees it as “the enduring theme of Canadian history” (vi).

3 Becoming Home to Native Nations

The first transformation, I concentrate on, occurred thousands of years before the establishment of French power in North America. Canada, as all of the Americas, transformed from uninhabited land to the home of its First Nations.

Scholars estimate different dates for the migration of the first humans to the North American continent ranging from 50,000 BC to 10,000 BC. ² Most likely the first immigrants travelled from Siberia via the land bridge Beringia which connected the Asian and American continents during the ice ages. ³ Some scholars also state that these earliest immigrants might have sailed. 4

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2. Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2002), 16, Margaret Conrad and Alvin Finkel, Canada: A National History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pearson Longman, 2007), 6, Nelles, A Little History of Canada, 1, Arthur J. Ray, I Have Lived Here Since the World Began: An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People, Revised ed. (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2005), 2, C. Roderick Wilson and Carl Urion, "First Nations Prehistory and Canadian History," in Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience, ed. Morrison and Wilson (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2004), 13.

3. Conrad and Finkel, Canada: A National History, 6.

4. Knut R. Fladmark, "The Feasibility of the Northwest Coast as a Migration Route for Early Man," in Early Man in America from a Circum-Pacific Perspective, ed. Bryan (Edmonton: 1978).

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These first inhabitants probably had contact with Chinese and Mediterranean civilizations in the end of the fourth millennium BC. ⁵ In 1000 AD the Norse arrived in present-day Newfoundland and started an agricultural settlement. Without success they withdrew to Greenland. ⁶ The Native inhabitants restricted these first settlement attempts of Europeans who were still without gun powder. 7

Other developments had more impact on Natives’ lives. In 800 AD Iroquoians settled in palisaded villages of up to 1,500 inhabitants, while all other societies remained hunters and gatherers. ⁸ 200 years later tobacco and beans were grown in present-day Ontario, where corn had already been cultivated for 300 years. ⁹ Finally, in the thirteenth century squash and sunflowers, which had been cultivated for 3,300 and 2,300 years respectively in the Northeastern Woodlands, were introduced in Ontario. Thus, the rise of the ‘three sisters’, squash, corn, and beans, began. 10

In the Arctic, the Thule started to supersede the Dorset in 1,000 AD. ¹¹ Five hundred years later, they had spread all the way to the Atlantic coast.

Increasing in population since the fourteenth century, by 1451 the Iroquoian peoples Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca formed the League of Five Nations to keep peace among themselves. ¹² During the next century the Iroquois established more confederacies. The northernmost was Huronia, the Five Nations’ direct competitor. ¹³ The Huron Confederacy grew larger than the Five Nations’ population by late sixteenth century. The Hurons dominated the region with alliances with the Five Nations stretching 805 kilometres to the south. 14

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5. Dickason, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, 32.

6. Conrad and Finkel, Canada: A National History, 20.

7. Dickason, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times.

8. Ibid., 51, 54.

9. Ibid., 22, 51.

10. Ibid., 22.

11. Ibid., 55.

12. Ibid., 51-4.

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As has been shown, significant changes were going on among Natives before continuous European contact. Yet there was no consistent social development among these fragmented first nations. The most important transformation during this period was that land where no humans had lived before 50,000 BC became home to 500,000 to two million people who spoke about 50 different languages and lived as distinct peoples by 1500.

4 European Fights in the New World

After having lived for 14,900 years without continuous contact with Europeans on the North American continent, Natives were again confronted with European invaders in the fifteenth century - and this time the Europeans decided to stay. Christopher Columbus was the first to start the conquest of the Americas. While looking for a sea passage to India, he, sailing under the Spanish Crown, arrived in the Caribbean in 1492. After his discovery, England, Scotland, France, and Holland wanted to take possession of the New World. ¹⁵ The competition for present-day Canada’s territory was eventually led by Britain and France. The first to arrive in present-day Canada during this period was Giovanni Caboto under the British flag. He landed on the east coast of Newfoundland in 1497. ¹⁶ With news about the abundant cod on its shores, more than 400 Portuguese, Spanish, Basque, and French ships came to fish by 1580. ¹⁷ In 1541, Jacques Cartier started a settlement on the site of present-day Quebec for the French Crown but failed two years later. ¹⁸ After this first attempt’s failure, Port Royal was established by Pierre du Gua de Monts in 1605. In 1609 Samuel de Champlain re-

13.Ibid., 51.

14. Ibid., 52.

15. Conrad and Finkel, Canada: A National History, 20-1.

16. Ibid., 21.

17. Ibid.

18. Dickason, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, 81.

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established Quebec with the hope for profits from the fur trade. ¹⁹ In the following decades, religious orders founded missions in Canada to Christianize the Natives. ²⁰ The relationship between the indigenous peoples and the newcomers was unequal due to the Europeans’ possession of guns. The colonists depended on the Natives’ knowledge for survival and success in the fur trade. They, nevertheless, regarded them as inferior and often treated them badly. ²¹ The Europeans took fish and furs from the American continent and brought diseases, plants, and animals from Europe. ²² Transplanting their Christian ideology of the agricultural ideal, Europeans cleared the forests to establish so-called “Neo-Europes”. ²³ The missionaries’ influence undermined the Natives’ traditional beliefs. ²⁴ Additionally, alcohol and fur trade activities deteriorated the Natives’ way of life. ²⁵ The imported diseases killed between one half and two thirds of some tribes from 1616 to 1837. ²⁶ Alliances with the French and the British who fought their European wars on the American continent changed power relations among the Natives. This was disastrous to the French ally Huronia which was destroyed in 1649 by the British allies of the Five Nations. 27

An important role was played by Native women. They became partners of the British and French fur traders who supplied the European merchants with furs from the interior. ²⁸ Native women established valuable contacts and made fur-relevant knowledge accessible to their _________________

19. Conrad and Finkel, Canada: A National History, 26.

20. Ibid., 28-30.

21. Ibid., 22-3, Ramsay Cook, Canada, Quebec and the Uses of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995), 52.

22. Cook, Canada, Quebec and the Uses of Nationalism, 54, Alfred Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation of America," Willliam and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1976): 290.

23. Cook, Canada, Quebec and the Uses of Nationalism, 51, Liza Piper and John Sandlos, "A Broken Frontier: Ecological Imperialism in the Canadian North," Environmental History 12, no. 4 (2007): 760.

24. Cook, Canada, Quebec and the Uses of Nationalism, 67.

25. Ibid., 68.

26. Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation of America," 290.

27. Conrad and Finkel, Canada: A National History, 35.

28. Sylvia Van Kirk, "Women in Between: Indian Women in Fur Trade Society in Western Canada," in Interpreting Canada's Past: Before Confederation, ed. Bumstedt (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986), 169.