"Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea": Prairie First Nations, The British Monarchy and the Vice Regal Connection to 1900‪.‬

In the summer of 2000, at Lower Fort Garry, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson attended a ceremony commemorating Treaty One, made in 1871 between Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and the Cree and Saulteaux. "This treaty," Clarkson has written, "established a relationship to last 'as long as the sun shines, grass grows and rivers flow." (1) At this, and at other ceremonies with First Nations people she was addressed as "Mother." Clarkson was following in a lengthy tradition of vice-regal visits to the West during which firm assurances were given First Nations of the sanctity of their treaties, and of their special, familial relationship with the British Crown. While this relationship was codified in the treaties, knowledge of, and an association with the British Crown began much earlier than the "numbered" treaties of the 1870s with prairie First Nations. Fur traders introduced the concept of a just, paternal monarch to "guide and animate their exertions," to inspire loyalty and promote peaceful relations. (2) Aboriginal spokespersons developed an oratorical tradition that incorporated references to the British monarchy in kinship terms that confirmed themselves as the equals of the Europeans, and called on the monarch's representatives to act with honour and integrity. Treaty commissioners of the 1870s were well aware of the First Nations' knowledge of the monarchy; in their negotiating tactics they drew on what lieutenant-governor and treaty commissioner Alexander Morris described as their "abiding confidence in the Government of the Queen, or the Great Mother as they style her." (3) The partnership of First Nations and the British Crown was firmly affixed in the 1870s treaties and it was confirmed and ratified in the years that followed through the audiences and ceremonies held with the Queen's representatives, the governors-general of Canada. With particular focus on the 1881 vice-regal tour of the Marquis of Lorne, this article demonstrates how First Nations used these visits to restate and recommit the equal parties to the treaties, and to remind their treaty partner of their commitments and obligations. From a First Nations perspective these visits ratified and confirmed their relationship with the Crown, and served as tangible recognitions of their status as sovereign nations who had entered into nation to nation treaties. Aboriginal protocol and ceremonies attended the vice-regal visits, including pipe ceremonies, an exchange of gifts, oratory and displays of dancing.