Chief Papaschase (also known as Passpasschase, Papastew, Pahpastayo, and John Gladieu-Quinn) and his family and community lived around
Fort Edmonton,
Fort Assiniboia and
Slave Lake in Alberta in the mid-1800s and often traded furs with the
Hudson's Bay Company. They settled permanently in the Edmonton area in the 1850s on the south side of the
North Saskatchewan River. Chief Papaschase and his brother Tahkoots signed on to Treaty 6 on August 21, 1877. However, they were not allocated a reserve until three years later, in 1880:
reserve (I.R. 136), far from the land along the riverbanks in what later became southeast
Edmonton,
Alberta including all of
Mill Woods. The boundaries in modern terms would be: 51 Avenue on the north, 119 Street on the west, 30 Avenue SW on the south, and 17 Street NW on the east. Many settlers did not want the reserve near the growing settlement of Edmonton.
Frank Oliver, in particular, advocated in his local newspaper, the Edmonton Bulletin, for the removal of the Papaschase Cree from their reserve and for the land to become available to settlers. A meeting was held in 1881 to petition
John A. Macdonald to relocate the Papaschase Cree and I.R. 136 away from Edmonton. In 1886, around 80 Papaschase members remained on the reserve, as many had taken Métis
scrip due to starvation, broken treaty promises, and lack of assistance from the government. The Papaschase people who took scrip lost their treaty status. The last remaining members left the reserve in 1887 after instruction from Assistant Indian Commissioner, Mr. Reed; many moved to nearby reserves such as the
Enoch Cree and the
Alexander First Nation. Chief Papaschase died at Elinor Lake in Northern Alberta in 1918. According to historian Jan Olson, "the Papaschase band lost its entire reserve in South Edmonton under highly questionable circumstances when three men signed a surrender document on November 19, 1888, at a meeting called with four days notice by the government agent. The federal government subdivided the reserve, and sold most of the land at auctions in 1891 and 1893, Land speculators bought most of it, and resold it to settlers. Railway companies also bought some of the lands they needed at auction or from speculators". The former reserve, located in
Strathcona County, was incrementally absorbed in its entirety by the City of Edmonton over a series of
seven annexations between December 30, 1959, and January 1, 1982. == Modern Papaschase ==