Human Cultures
The First Nations of this region were not solely buffalo-hunting nomads, as were tribes to the south. They also relied to a great extent on trapping (rabbits, etc.) fishing, and deer and moose hunting, as well as gathering parkland berries such as the Saskatoon berry or the high bush cranberry.
This area was one of the most important regions of the fur trade in North America. Both the Assiniboine and (North) Saskatchwen rivers were major fur trade routes, with a number of fur trade posts, much moreso than rivers to the prairie south. Around these posts the Metis people were formed from the intermarriage of white furtraders and native trappers.
Once European settlement began this region was desired by the peasant farmers of Eastern Europe and the smallholders of Quebec for its wooded land, so that they could build and heat their own homes. This is as opposed to the primarily British and American settlers who desired grasslands that were easier to break and plough. At this time people of similar backgrounds were allowed to concentrate in to block settlements by the federal government.
As a result, the ethnic makeup of the Prairie Provinces is somewhat divded north-and-south. Cree people, Métis people, French Canadians, and Ukrainian Canadians are concentrated in the parkland belt, and in cities such as Edmonton and Saskatoon. As opposed to Calgary and Regina which are primarily English and German.
Read more about this topic: Aspen Parkland
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or cultures:
“To people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidences of human labour and care in the soil of an empty country. It comes to you as a sort of message, makes you feel differently about the ground you walk over every day.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)