This article examines the evolution of "Indian Policy" in New Brunswick in the early to mid nineteenth century. Upton argues that New Brunswick lacked a cohesive Native policy, and showed only sporadic interest in the affairs and welfare of its Native people. Something close to a policy began to emerge in the 1840s when the colonial government began a policy of renting reserved land to fund Native education and settlement, but these efforts quickly disintegrated into a race to sell off large portions of reserved land to white squatters for the profit of the colonial government. Upton argues that the Natives of New Brunswick were without the constitutional framework, government structures, and missionary allies that acted as a safeguard to Native interests in many other British North American colonies, and thus were susceptible to the whim of the state and predatory squatters. That the reserve system survived at all was due to their having been reduced to the least agriculturally desirable land, thus warding off further squatter incursion.
| 