The Western Métis
While these communities were growing during the late 1700s, a biracial population of a rather different
character was becoming noticeable to the north and west of the Great Lakes watershed. RUPERT'S LAND,
the region draining into Hudson Bay, was granted by Charles II of England in 1670 for the exclusive trade
of the HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. After the Treaty of UTRECHT in 1713 granted Hudson Bay to the British,
HBC posts there became permanent residential enclaves among the predominantly CREE natives, who,
as "Homeguard" traders and provisioners, were basic to the company's survival and success.
Métis Chasing the Buffalo Herd
Paul Kane, 1846, watercolour on paper (courtesy Stark Foundation, Orange, Texas).
Riel, Louis
Louis Riel, circa 1873 (courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733).
As around the Great Lakes, white women were absent; and natives eager to consolidate trade and
friendship offered wives to the English and Scottish traders in "the custom of the country." HBC
employees, however, violated strict company rules if they accepted. The HBC directors in London,
strongly aware of the costs and problems of maintaining posts so remote from their home base in so
northerly an environment, sought rigid controls on the numbers of post dependants. The need to
maintain security at the forts and to minimize expenses and sources of friction with the natives
reinforced company concerns about maintaining servants' celibacy and chastity and, in turn, reinforced
the employees' efforts to keep transgressions off the record. By the 1740s, however, when officer James
Isham reported that traders' native offspring around the posts had become "pretty Numerious," the HBC
London Committee had to acknowledge the limits of its control. By 1810 the company had given some
attention to both the responsibilities and the rewards of educating and training these progeny into "a
colony of very useful hands."
These early Hudson's Bay offspring did not become classed as a separate ethnic/racial entity in these
years. Even if the company could not suppress country marriages, it could and did suppress the growth
of dependent post communities and free traders by removing from the bay all British servants who
retired or were dismissed and by encouraging natives to disperse to their hunting grounds each winter.
A very few HBC officers' native sons gained permission to travel to Britain; most offspring were
assimilated among the Cree Homeguard, and a few became company servants, sometimes classed by
1800 as "Natives of Hudson's Bay" or even as"English."
The HBC data to 1810 show that biological mixing in itself was insufficient to occasion Métis
"ethnogenesis" - the rise to recognition and self-consciousness of a new racial-political-cultural group.
These HBC offspring lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate
identity. Through much of the 18th century, company rules gave their trader-fathers good reason to be
circumspect about their existence. HBC word usage also muted their distinctiveness. It was in New
France, and in British Canada after 1763, that Métis,bois-brûlé, and later, halfbreed, came into use; HBC
men lacked such terms until they picked them up from the Canadians in the early 1800s.If language is any
guide to thought, perhaps HBC writers also lacked (although they later learned)the increasingly
judgemental racial/blood consciousness shown by some of their Canadian FUR-TRADE counterparts by
the early 19th century.
Events of the late1700s and early 1800s brought great changes for both British and Canadian fur-trade
offspring. Around the Great Lakes, Britain's conquest in 1760 of New France may have heightened a
Métis sense of separateness as the new regime intruded. The leadership of the Montréal fur trade
became British - in fact, mainly Highland Scottish, as the NORTH WEST COMPANY gained strength in the
1780s. Francophones whose experience and skills continued to be basic to the trade were relegated to
lower ranks. In 1794 JAY'S TREATY fixed the United States-Canadian boundary around the Great Lakes. In
following decades, US white settlers and governments displaced and disorganized numerous Métis
communities around the lower lakes, leading many to migrate northwest towards Minnesota and Rupert's
Land.
It was in the Red River Region of Manitoba that the Métis became conspicuous in Canadian history. By
1810 they had established roles as buffalo hunters and provisioners to the NWC. As NWC supply lines
lengthened to ATHABASCA and beyond, the Red River heartland was central to the Montréal traders.
Accordingly, when in 1811 Thomas Douglas, fifth earl of SELKIRK, reached an agreement with the HBC to
found the colony of ASSINIBOIA with a band of Scottish settlers, the NOR'WESTERS and their native-born
employees and associates saw it as a direct threat to their trade, livelihood and territorial interests.
Events of the next decade are well known: the Pemmican War, the SEVEN OAKS killing of Governor
Robert SEMPLE and several colonists in 1816, the often violent conflicts between the HBC and NWC, and
the final merger in 1821. Less recognized is the fact that each company's RED RIVER COLONY
involvement was intensified in part by the presence of its own native-born constituency. The growing
numbers of "Hudson's Bay natives" were a factor in the HBC decision to support the colony. Servants
with "country" wives and families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and
have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by
relocating dependent post populations in a place where they could become self-supporting under the
company's governance.
The Nor'Westers and their Métis associates had a more complex relationship. The NWC claimed less
control over its Métis and freemen, many of whose biracial connections long predated its arrival in the
Northwest. In the conflict, this fact served the NWC well, for no matter what support it actually gave to
Cuthbert GRANT, Jr, and his Métis cohorts, it could and did argue that these men were defending an
identity and interest of their own. Nor'Wester William MCGILLIVRAY admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818
that Grant and the others were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they
one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property
in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well
proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and metifs [an alternate form of
Métis] have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."
From 1821 to 1870 Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual
origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Orkney Islands (a major
HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. The extent to which these subgroups were allied is debated.
Some argue for their solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, and shared
involvements in the BUFFALO HUNT, the HBC transport brigades, and Louis RIEL's provisional
government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between the Roman Catholic francophones
and the Protestant anglophone "country-born," as they were sometimes known. The debate reflects in
part the complexity of the evidence and the fact that many individuals, such as members of the
Alexander ROSS family, suffered ambivalence about their Indian heritage and about Métis political
activism.
Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population of "halfbreeds"in the Northwest
was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate as racial interpretations of human behaviour
gained ground. As such, they were often stereotyped and disparaged, as by HBC Governor George
SIMPSON in his characterizations of the company's "halfbreed" clerks and postmasters from the
mid-1820sto 1832.
Simpson showed biases that were common among other Europeans (clergy and colonists) arriving in Red
River and the fur-trade country and among numerous scientific and popular writers of the period;
attributes of race or "blood" were linked with cultural and behavioural traits to produce deterministic
judgements that science later proved untenable. Such views, applied to biracial groups, covered a wide
range; such hybrids were everything from "faulty stock" or a "spurious breed" to "the natural link
between civilization and barbarism," as Alexis de Tocqueville put it in the 1830s. Daniel WILSON, writing
of the Red River halfbreeds in 1876, moved beyond such interpretations. Racial traits, he suggested, did
not set limits to adaptiveness or potentials. Besides demonstrating "a remarkable aptitude for
self-government" in their organization of the buffalo hunt, the Métis also showed "capacity for all the
higher duties of a settled, industrious community."
While these communities were growing during the late 1700s, a biracial population of a rather different
character was becoming noticeable to the north and west of the Great Lakes watershed. RUPERT'S LAND,
the region draining into Hudson Bay, was granted by Charles II of England in 1670 for the exclusive trade
of the HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. After the Treaty of UTRECHT in 1713 granted Hudson Bay to the British,
HBC posts there became permanent residential enclaves among the predominantly CREE natives, who,
as "Homeguard" traders and provisioners, were basic to the company's survival and success.
Métis Chasing the Buffalo Herd
Paul Kane, 1846, watercolour on paper (courtesy Stark Foundation, Orange, Texas).
Riel, Louis
Louis Riel, circa 1873 (courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733).
As around the Great Lakes, white women were absent; and natives eager to consolidate trade and
friendship offered wives to the English and Scottish traders in "the custom of the country." HBC
employees, however, violated strict company rules if they accepted. The HBC directors in London,
strongly aware of the costs and problems of maintaining posts so remote from their home base in so
northerly an environment, sought rigid controls on the numbers of post dependants. The need to
maintain security at the forts and to minimize expenses and sources of friction with the natives
reinforced company concerns about maintaining servants' celibacy and chastity and, in turn, reinforced
the employees' efforts to keep transgressions off the record. By the 1740s, however, when officer James
Isham reported that traders' native offspring around the posts had become "pretty Numerious," the HBC
London Committee had to acknowledge the limits of its control. By 1810 the company had given some
attention to both the responsibilities and the rewards of educating and training these progeny into "a
colony of very useful hands."
These early Hudson's Bay offspring did not become classed as a separate ethnic/racial entity in these
years. Even if the company could not suppress country marriages, it could and did suppress the growth
of dependent post communities and free traders by removing from the bay all British servants who
retired or were dismissed and by encouraging natives to disperse to their hunting grounds each winter.
A very few HBC officers' native sons gained permission to travel to Britain; most offspring were
assimilated among the Cree Homeguard, and a few became company servants, sometimes classed by
1800 as "Natives of Hudson's Bay" or even as"English."
The HBC data to 1810 show that biological mixing in itself was insufficient to occasion Métis
"ethnogenesis" - the rise to recognition and self-consciousness of a new racial-political-cultural group.
These HBC offspring lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate
identity. Through much of the 18th century, company rules gave their trader-fathers good reason to be
circumspect about their existence. HBC word usage also muted their distinctiveness. It was in New
France, and in British Canada after 1763, that Métis,bois-brûlé, and later, halfbreed, came into use; HBC
men lacked such terms until they picked them up from the Canadians in the early 1800s.If language is any
guide to thought, perhaps HBC writers also lacked (although they later learned)the increasingly
judgemental racial/blood consciousness shown by some of their Canadian FUR-TRADE counterparts by
the early 19th century.
Events of the late1700s and early 1800s brought great changes for both British and Canadian fur-trade
offspring. Around the Great Lakes, Britain's conquest in 1760 of New France may have heightened a
Métis sense of separateness as the new regime intruded. The leadership of the Montréal fur trade
became British - in fact, mainly Highland Scottish, as the NORTH WEST COMPANY gained strength in the
1780s. Francophones whose experience and skills continued to be basic to the trade were relegated to
lower ranks. In 1794 JAY'S TREATY fixed the United States-Canadian boundary around the Great Lakes. In
following decades, US white settlers and governments displaced and disorganized numerous Métis
communities around the lower lakes, leading many to migrate northwest towards Minnesota and Rupert's
Land.
It was in the Red River Region of Manitoba that the Métis became conspicuous in Canadian history. By
1810 they had established roles as buffalo hunters and provisioners to the NWC. As NWC supply lines
lengthened to ATHABASCA and beyond, the Red River heartland was central to the Montréal traders.
Accordingly, when in 1811 Thomas Douglas, fifth earl of SELKIRK, reached an agreement with the HBC to
found the colony of ASSINIBOIA with a band of Scottish settlers, the NOR'WESTERS and their native-born
employees and associates saw it as a direct threat to their trade, livelihood and territorial interests.
Events of the next decade are well known: the Pemmican War, the SEVEN OAKS killing of Governor
Robert SEMPLE and several colonists in 1816, the often violent conflicts between the HBC and NWC, and
the final merger in 1821. Less recognized is the fact that each company's RED RIVER COLONY
involvement was intensified in part by the presence of its own native-born constituency. The growing
numbers of "Hudson's Bay natives" were a factor in the HBC decision to support the colony. Servants
with "country" wives and families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and
have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by
relocating dependent post populations in a place where they could become self-supporting under the
company's governance.
The Nor'Westers and their Métis associates had a more complex relationship. The NWC claimed less
control over its Métis and freemen, many of whose biracial connections long predated its arrival in the
Northwest. In the conflict, this fact served the NWC well, for no matter what support it actually gave to
Cuthbert GRANT, Jr, and his Métis cohorts, it could and did argue that these men were defending an
identity and interest of their own. Nor'Wester William MCGILLIVRAY admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818
that Grant and the others were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they
one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property
in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well
proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and metifs [an alternate form of
Métis] have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."
From 1821 to 1870 Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual
origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Orkney Islands (a major
HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. The extent to which these subgroups were allied is debated.
Some argue for their solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, and shared
involvements in the BUFFALO HUNT, the HBC transport brigades, and Louis RIEL's provisional
government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between the Roman Catholic francophones
and the Protestant anglophone "country-born," as they were sometimes known. The debate reflects in
part the complexity of the evidence and the fact that many individuals, such as members of the
Alexander ROSS family, suffered ambivalence about their Indian heritage and about Métis political
activism.
Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population of "halfbreeds"in the Northwest
was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate as racial interpretations of human behaviour
gained ground. As such, they were often stereotyped and disparaged, as by HBC Governor George
SIMPSON in his characterizations of the company's "halfbreed" clerks and postmasters from the
mid-1820sto 1832.
Simpson showed biases that were common among other Europeans (clergy and colonists) arriving in Red
River and the fur-trade country and among numerous scientific and popular writers of the period;
attributes of race or "blood" were linked with cultural and behavioural traits to produce deterministic
judgements that science later proved untenable. Such views, applied to biracial groups, covered a wide
range; such hybrids were everything from "faulty stock" or a "spurious breed" to "the natural link
between civilization and barbarism," as Alexis de Tocqueville put it in the 1830s. Daniel WILSON, writing
of the Red River halfbreeds in 1876, moved beyond such interpretations. Racial traits, he suggested, did
not set limits to adaptiveness or potentials. Besides demonstrating "a remarkable aptitude for
self-government" in their organization of the buffalo hunt, the Métis also showed "capacity for all the
higher duties of a settled, industrious community."
The Red River Provisional Government
Events from the mid-1800s onwards offered few outlets for the qualities that Wilson perceived. The
1840s and 1850s saw Métis challenges to the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River: the
trial and freeing of trader Pierre-Guillaume SAYER in 1849, and the anti-HBC lobbying efforts in London
by Alexander ISBISTER. Other events soon overshadowed the HBC question: the intensifying eastern
interest in developing the West (heightened by Henry Y. HIND'S glowing report of its agricultural
potential), Confederation and the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land to the Canadian government. The
consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents'
holdings touched off Louis Riel's move to establish a provisional government in November of1869. The
Canadian bargaining with Riel led to passage of the MANITOBA ACT, securing the admittance of a small
portion of the present province to Canada with provincial status and, most important for the Métis,
stating that 1 400 000 acres (566 580 ha)would be allotted for "the children of the halfbreeds."
The promised land base was lost in the next decade, however. The settlers and troops who arrived in
the new province from 1870 on were hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by
a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams
Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act
undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers. Of the approximately 10 000 persons
of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the next
several years. While some went north and some south to the US, most headed west to the Catholic
mission settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South
Saskatchewan River, where they founded or joined St Laurent, BATOCHE and DUCK LAKE.
........Back
Events from the mid-1800s onwards offered few outlets for the qualities that Wilson perceived. The
1840s and 1850s saw Métis challenges to the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River: the
trial and freeing of trader Pierre-Guillaume SAYER in 1849, and the anti-HBC lobbying efforts in London
by Alexander ISBISTER. Other events soon overshadowed the HBC question: the intensifying eastern
interest in developing the West (heightened by Henry Y. HIND'S glowing report of its agricultural
potential), Confederation and the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land to the Canadian government. The
consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents'
holdings touched off Louis Riel's move to establish a provisional government in November of1869. The
Canadian bargaining with Riel led to passage of the MANITOBA ACT, securing the admittance of a small
portion of the present province to Canada with provincial status and, most important for the Métis,
stating that 1 400 000 acres (566 580 ha)would be allotted for "the children of the halfbreeds."
The promised land base was lost in the next decade, however. The settlers and troops who arrived in
the new province from 1870 on were hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by
a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams
Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act
undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers. Of the approximately 10 000 persons
of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the next
several years. While some went north and some south to the US, most headed west to the Catholic
mission settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South
Saskatchewan River, where they founded or joined St Laurent, BATOCHE and DUCK LAKE.
........Back
