History of Alberta

The province of Alberta, Canada, has a history and prehistory stretching back thousands of years. The ancestors of today's First Nations in Alberta arrived in the area by at least 10,000 BC according to the Bering land bridge theory. Southerly tribes, the Plains Indians, such as the Blackfoot, Blood, and Peigans eventually adapted to seminomadic plains bison hunting, originally without the aid of horses, but later with horses that Europeans had introduced.

Recorded or written history begins with the arrival of Europeans. The rich soil was ideal for growing wheat and the vast prairie grasslands were great for raising cattle. The coming of the railways in the late 19th century led to large-scale migration of farmers and cattleman from Eastern Canada, the United States, and Europe. Wheat and cattle remain important, but the farms are much larger now and the rural population much smaller. Alberta has urbanized and its economic base has expanded from the export of wheat and beef to include the export of oil and gas as well.

More northerly tribes, like the Woodland Cree and the Chipewyan also hunted, trapped, and fished for other types of game in the aspen parkland and boreal forest regions.

Later, the mixture of these native peoples with French fur traders created a new cultural group, the Métis. The Métis established themselves to the east of Alberta, but after being displaced by white settlement, many migrated to Alberta.

Following the arrival of outside European observers it is possible to reconstruct a rough narrative history of the nations of what later became Alberta. Using later-recorded oral histories as well as archaeological and linguistic evidence, it also possible to make inferences back further in time. But in both cases the evidentiary base is thin.

It is believed that at least some parts of the Great Plains were depopulated by a prolonged period of the drought during the Medieval Warm Period (c. 950 – c. 1250). The area was repopulated once the drought subsided, by peoples from a diverse number of language families and from all parts of the North American continent. The Numic languages (for example Comanche and Shoshoni) are from the Uto-Aztecan language family and came to the Plains from the southwest. Algonquian speakers (Plains Cree, Blackfoot, Saulteaux) are originally from the northeast. The Siouxan peoples (Great Sioux, Assiniboine, Nakoda, Mandan, Crow, etc.) speak a family of languages different from both of the above, and are from southeast. There are also small offshoots of the Na-Dene languages from the far northwest found on the Plains, including the Tsuu T'ina.

The smallest unit of organization for both plains and subarctic people was what the European-Canadian explorers called a "lodge". A lodge was an extended family or other close-knit group who lived together in the same teepee or other dwelling. Lodges travelled together in groups which anthropologists call "bands". In the case of the Blackfoot during the historic era this would include 10 to 30 lodges, or roughly 80 to 240 persons. The band was the fundamental unit of organization on the Plains for both hunting and warfare. Bands were loose associations that could be formed and dissolved depending on circumstances, which gave their member lodges much freedom, but also less certainty. Therefore, people would also be socially bound to others in variety of other groups, such as common descent (a clan), common language and religion (a tribe), or a common age or rank (a ritual society or a warrior society, referred to in anthropology as a sodality).

Population density for both plains and subarctic peoples (as for most hunter-gatherer societies) was quite low, but distributed very differently. Plains bands could often congregate into large, pan-tribal hunting or war parties—especially once horses were available—due to the abundant supply of bison for food and the open, easily traversed landscape. As well, bands could migrate over vast distances, following the bison or for military purposes. Subarctic peoples also migrated, but in much smaller groups since the productivity of the boreal forests is so low that it cannot support any large groups in one place for long. Migrations in the subarctic would include following traplines, snowshoeing onto frozen lakes for ice fishing, searching for moose and other game, and returning to favourite berry patches.