ABSTRACT
In the next four chapters we shall describe the adaptations made by each of the major groups of the contemporary Jasper population. We begin with the Plains Cree Indians,1 the first inhabitants of Jasper, displaced by the Euro-Americans, as the Amerinds were everywhere on the continent, driven ever westward and eventually into enclaves called reserves in Canada and reservations in the United States. Whether reserve or reservation, the condition of the Indians within these enclaves has been rarely prosperous or even physically healthy. The Jasper reserve was one of the more disturbing cases: a group of from 100 to 120 Indians—the number fluctuated—inhabited a tract of about 3,000 acres in the aspen bush forest near the crest of the Cypress Hills—land that lacked sufficient pasture for cattle and with a growing season too short and with too little open land for crop production. Perhaps one small family of parents and children could have made a modest living by ranching the area at contemporary levels of cost and income, without substantial development and intensification of its resources.
