2Ī British army officer sent to investigate the Canadian West was shocked by what he found. The murderers escaped back to Montana and never faced justice.

In 1873, a dispute between some Indigenous hunters and whiskey traders in the Cypress Hills of southern Alberta where 'all parties were intoxicated' led to the whiskey traders massacring at least 20 Assiniboine men, women, and children.

The easy availability of potent alcohol contributed to outbreaks of lawlessness and violence. Most treated the Indigenous with contempt and had no moral scruples about trading whiskey adulterated with dangerous chemicals. Many were adventurers, mercenaries, and veterans of the US Civil War. This was the context the whiskey traders stepped into. Indigenous traders were blindsided by this new intoxicant, which put them at a disadvantage in trade negotiations. worked to make the Blackfoot reliant on spirits: they went so far as to make the drinking of spirits part of the trading ritual. So the traders persisted, the Hudson's Bay Co. But the traders also had a highly cynical motivation: getting people drunk before a trade negotiation was a great way to come away with better terms. Fur traders noted the Blackfoot's lack of enthusiasm towards liquor writing, 'These people are not so far enervated by the use of spiritous liquors, as to be slaves to it.' 1 The trading companies in the prairies were disappointed by the Blackfoot's lack of interest in a cheap and easily produced trade good. In the late 1700s, traders brought whiskey to trade with the Blackfoot but found them unimpressed and uninterested the Blackfoot perceived whiskey as a form of water and saw no sense in paying for it. Prior to European contact, alcohol was not a feature of Indigenous life on the prairies. Around 1869 'whiskey traders', as they came to be called, crossed the porous border from Montana into southern Alberta and set up 'Fort Whoop Up' where they began exchanging powerful, often adulterated, whiskey for furs. It was illegal to trade or sell alcohol with Indigenous Peoples at the time, but enforcing this law on the unscrupulous whiskey bootleggers was impossible. In exchange, they offered the Blackfoots and Bloods blankets, metal implements, guns-and alcohol. White traders seeking buffalo hides and beaver pelts progressed into southern Alberta in the 1860s. As far back as the early 1800s, they also began trapping beaver to trade the pelts with the trading post established by the Hudson's Bay Company at Edmonton. Using photos from the period we will see what Calgary was like in those exciting days before the First World War, and we will examine some of the reasons i'ts become what it is today: a metropolis steeped in dreams of the West.īefore European settlement around Calgary, the local Indigenous Peoples residing near the junction of the Bow and Elbow Rivers sustained themselves by hunting the massive herds of buffalo that roamed the surrounding prairie. This walking tour takes us down 8th Avenue, the heart of Calgary's commercial district for 140 years. The next four decades were marked by explosive growth, taking the population from a few hundred in 1883 to 43,000 by 1911. The arrival of the railway was a truly transformative event, and brought with it an rush of immigrants from across Canada, Britain, and beyond. By 1883 the Canadian Pacific Railroad reached Calgary, connecting this previously remote area to the rest of Canada and the world. Modern Calgary officially began with the building of the North West Mounted Police fort in 1875. When European settlers eventually hunted the buffalo to extinction, some Indigenous peoples were forced to start ranching on their reserves in the surrounding areas. While settlers from far and wide came to settle in Calgary in the late 19th and 20th centuries, this land was where the Plains First Nations lived, traded, and hunted bison for thousands of years.

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