Clearing the Plains by James Daschuk

Author:James Daschuk
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Regina Press
Published: 2015-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chief Crowfoot and his family, 1884. Glenbow Archives, NA-1104-1.

In northern Alberta, where the Hudson’s Bay Company was making significant improvements to its transportation system, the disease spread easily. Game depletion and a killing famine exacerbated the medical crisis.50 The migration of many Cree northward into the territory of the Dunneza undoubtedly contributed greatly to the problem. Although the population suffered from “Consumption, rheumatism and Scrofula, as well as the scarcity of food,” the changing demography of the Peace River region was the result of the Dunneza “dying out fast, but the Crees, who are coming in from Lesser Slave Lake and Edmonton, are increasing.”51 At Lac la Biche, twenty-seven died of the outbreak in October 1886. By spring, 160 people would be dead.52 In Athabasca, where measles and whooping cough lingered, 150 people perished at Slave Lake.53 Writing from Assissippi mission, Hines stated that the epidemic “attacked my Indians at Stony Lake, and about one fourth of them died of the effects, and its victims were mostly men.”54 The mission itself was spared the brunt of the epidemics, but its mortality rose dramatically through 1886 and 1887.55 Although causes of death were not reported for the Anglican mission at Lac la Ronge, mortality was more than five times higher than normal in 1887.56 The spike in deaths from measles in northern Saskatchewan is evidence of the otherwise good health of the population there. Other than mortality from the measles epidemic, northern populations underwent no significant changes to their health conditions through the second half of the nineteenth century. Able to feed themselves and maintain their traditional economies, and not bound by the harsh reserve system, northern communities in Saskatchewan did not succumb to epidemic tuberculosis in the way that their brethren to the south had.57 Within a decade of the treaties, divergent health outcomes between relatively healthy northerners and suffering southern communities were well ensconced. As was becoming the norm, those with the least contact with the Indian department were the healthiest.58

In southern Alberta during the winter of 1886–87, measles claimed 10 percent of the Stoney (Nakota) population.59 Indian Agent William de Balinhard commented that “the Stonies have always seemed to have less power of resistance to attacks of sickness of every kind … although no satisfactory explanation of this unfortunate peculiarity has been discovered.” Among Chapoostiquan’s people, deaths were reported in almost every family.60 In October 1886, sickness broke out in Sharphead’s Stoney band, and within a year a third of them would be dead.61 The community never recovered, and the survivors were amalgamated into the band led by Ironhead. By the end of the decade, the disease claimed twenty-nine lives at Onion Lake.62

By 1889–90, mortality associated with the measles epidemic was overshadowed by a more deadly outbreak of acute contagious disease. Influenza spread to the malnourished and reserve populations suffering widespread sickness from TB; the attendant mortality resulted in a population nadir. The influenza that led to this low point was part of the first truly global pandemic for which records are available.

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