The Nehiyaw Pwat (Iron Alliance): Encounters with the Dakota

The Iron Alliance was a political and military alliance of what was called the Old Northwest of Canada and the Northwestern United States. This confederacy included various individual bands that allied together against common enemies. The ethnic groups that made up the Confederacy were the branches of the Plains Cree who had entered the area in the mid-1700s, the Assiniboine or Nakoda, plus their Metis relatives who were involved in the fur trade. The Confederacy rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade when they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of armaments and trade goods to other Indigenous groups, and the flow of furs to the North West Company, Hudson’s Bay Company and the American Fur Company trading posts. They also controlled the transportation system and much of the horse trade. The peoples also played a major role in the bison hunt and the pemmican trade. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds sapped the power of the Confederacy after the 1860s, and it could no longer act as a barrier to U.S. and Canadian expansion.
For the purposes of this paper emphasis is given to Ojibway and Metis encounters with the Dakota.