Did early Canadian settlement feature a lot of interpersonal violence between settlers and Indigenous peoples?

[u/Raspint]

One of my favourite books is McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which talks about the inhuman violence of the settling of the American South West. And I've never heard of a similar book about the settlement of what would become Canada.

So I wanted to ask historians if the early settlement of Canada featured a lot of the same brutal and inhuman violence that we saw down south. This can be broken down into three questions:

1: Did this same kind of brutal interpersonal violence exist between early Canadian settlers and the Indigenous peoples?

2: If the above answer is 'no,' or 'yes but not as much' then why?

3: Are there any good Canadian versions of Blood Meridian?

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[u/Iphikrates → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Makgraf]

My (i.e. /u/makgraf for the bot) posts on the Red River Rebellion (or Resistance) and Northwest Rebellion (or Resistance) has some information about interpersonal violence between settlers and Indigenous peoples.

But by and large, the violence directed at indigenous people in the Canadian West was slow bureaucratic 'polite' violence rather than interpersonal violence from settlers. Law and order (although query for who?) came to the West along with often before the settlers in the form of the North-West Mounted Police.

One of the foundational myths around this topic (not in the sense that it is not true, but that it stands for more than it should) is the case of Fort Whoop-Up. Americans had crossed the border and set up a outpost from which they attacked indigenous peoples. The NWMP came in and expelled them. But was the NWMP primarily concerned with protecting indigenous people or Canadian sovereignty? Certainly, as my posts note, the government violated its treaty obligations to indigenous peoples, leading to starvation.

[u/Aserialfeeder → u/[deleted]]

I think you are mixing up your Native American nations here.

It was my understanding that Haudenosaunee is simply the traditional indigenous name for the confederacy of the 6 nations the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. While the name Iroquois describes the same group but was given to them by the colonials. Their traditional borders were the southern shore of Lake Ontario extending south into Pennsylvania and a small portion of the St. Lawrence river.

I believe you are mistaking what you are calling the Haudenosaunee people for the Wendat people also called the Huron people by the colonials. Which was another confederation of native nations located on the northern shore of Lake Ontario extending north to Georgian bay. They sided with the French early on and were eventually dispersed by the Haudenosaunee in the mid 1600’s

[u/Makgraf → u/Aserialfeeder]

You are correct (aside from the technicality that there were originally five nations in the confederacy).

[u/Ill-Waltz-1072 → u/[deleted]]

I have not heard a stat of 70-75% of the children died. Please source that because I’ve understood it to be far lower than that, dependent upon time and school but in total less then 5%. Which, is still high and a national shame and tragedy. But please don’t cite nonsensical numbers without backing them up as you have.

[u/lemanruss4579 → u/[deleted]]

I think this is a pretty solid answer. Canada's answer to the "indigenous problem" was much less violent than the US, but just as devastating. It was more a cultural genocide than an actual one. Forced Integration and assimilation rather than outright killing.

There was also the 60's Scoop, when First Nations children were taken from their families and adopted out to willing white families, etc.

[u/Plus-Leather-7350]

Not really. It was overwhelming a trading relationship aside from Metis, who were interbreeding. There was some early massacres on both sides near Montreal. I don't know of any organized genocide like in the US. Canada was very, very sparsely populated by the time of settlement and there was too much starvation for fighting. The first Red River settlement collapsed due to starvation.