Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Metis in the Nineteenth Century 9781442675827

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Homeland to Hinterland The Changing Worlds of the Red River Metis in the Nineteenth Century

Most writing on Metis history has tended to concentrate on the Resistance of 1869-70 and the Rebellion of 1885, without adequately explaining the social and economic origins of the Metis that shaped those conflicts. Historians have often emphasized the aboriginal aspect of the Metis heritage, stereotyping the Metis as a primitive people unable or unwilling to adjust to civilized life and capitalist society. In this social and economic history of the Metis of the Red River Settlement, specifically the parishes of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's, Gerhard Ens argues that the Metis participated with growing confidence in two worlds: one Indian and pre-capitalist, the other European and capitalist. Ens maintains that Metis identity was not defined by biology or blood but rather by the economic and social niche they carved out for themselves within the fur trade. Ens finds that the Metis, rather than being overwhelmed, adapted quickly to the changed economic conditions of the 1840s and actually influenced the nature of change. The opening of new markets and the rise of the buffalo-robe trade fed a 'cottage industry' whose increasing importance had significant repercussions for the maintenance of ethnic boundaries, the nature of Metis response to the Riel Resistance, and the eventual decline of the Red River Settlement as a Metis homeland. GERHARD j. ENS is an associate professor at Brandon University. His most recent book is Die Schule Muss Sein: A History of the Mennonite Collegiate Institute.

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Homeland

to Hinterland The Changing Worlds of the Red River Metis in the Nineteenth Century

GERHARD J. ENS

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1996 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-0835-6 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-7822-2 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Ens, GerhardJ. (GerhardJohn), 1954Homeland to hinterland Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-0835-6 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-7822-2 (pbk.) 1. Metis - Manitoba - Economic conditions.* 2. Metis - Manitoba - Social conditions.* 3. Red River Settlement - Economic conditions. 4. Red River Settlement - Social conditions. 5. Metis - History - 19th century. I. Title. FC109.E5 1996 E99.M47E5 1996

971.2700497

C96-930400-5

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

To John E. Foster

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Contents

List of Maps, Tables, and Figures Acknowledgments

ix xiii

Introduction

3

1 The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

9

2 The Red River Peasantry: Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

28

3 The Red River Peasantry: The Demographic Regime

57

4 The Metis and the Transition to Market Capitalism, 1840-1870

72

5 Metis Demography and Proto-Industrialism in Red River,

1840-1870 "

93

6 Family, Ethnicity, Class, and the Riel Resistance of 1869-1870

123

7 Homeland to Hinterland: The Dispersal of the Red River Metis after 1870

139

Conclusion

172

Appendix A: Family Re constitution Methodology

177

Appendix B: Migration Data and Methodology

183

Notes

191

Bibliography

229

Map and Illustration Credits

255

Index

25 7

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Maps, Tables, and Figures

MAPS

1 Plan of the Red River Settlement Showing River-Lot Parishes, circa 1871

xv

2 Plan Showing the Red River Settlement in 1857

11

3 Detail of Plan Showing the Parish of St Andrew's in 1857

24

4 Metis Wintering Sites, 1840s to 1870s

79

5 Plan of St Andrew's Showing Extent of Cultivation, circa 1870

115

6 Plan of St Francois Xavier Showing Extent of Cultivation, circa 1870

116

7 Destinations of Metis Emigrants from Red River, 1830-69

119

TABLES

1 Population and Cultivation in Red River, 1835

36

2 Livestock Production in Red River, 1835

38

3 Ratio of Illegitimate Births and Premarital Conceptions, 1834-9 4 Mean Marriage Rates, 1834-49

59 60

5 Mean Age at First Marriage, to 1840

65

6 Mean Birth Rates, 1834-49

66

7 Infant Mortality, 1834-69

70

x

Maps, Tables, and Figures

8 Number of Red River Carts Travelling Annually to St Paul and Value of the St Paul Fur Trade, 1844-66 81 9 Population and Cultivation in Red River, 1849 82 10 Population and Cultivation in St Andrew's and St Francois Xavier, 1856 and 1870 85 11 Ratio of Illegitimate Births and Premarital Conceptions, 1834-70 95 12 Age at First Marriage, 1834-69 99 13 Interval in Months between Widowhood and Remarriage, 1834-90 100 14 Mean Number of Births to Women by Date of Marriage and Age of Women 102 15 Mean Number of Children per Completed Family by Parish and Marriage Cohort 103 16 Infant and Child Mortality by Birth Cohort, 1834-69 17 Metis Migration from Red River before 1870 by Parish 18 Mean Age of Family Head and Mean Number of Sons over Sixteen, 1835-70 19 Breakdown of Census Variables for Migrant and Non-Migrant at Next Census, 1835-70 20 Cross-tabulation of Census Variables with Migrant, 1835-70 21 Mean Ages of Metis Opponents and Supporters of Riel 22 Official Land Ownership of Riel's Metis Supporters and Opponents 23 Voting Patterns in the Manitoba Legislature, 1870-4

105 112 113 120 121 134 137 142

24 Voting Patterns in the Manitoba Legislature, 1874-8 25 Representation in the Manitoba Legislature, 1870-82 26 Type and Value of Exports from Manitoba through the United States, 1871-81

146 149 152

27 Exports of Buffalo Robes to Canada and the United States through St Paul, 1871-81

153

28 Infant Mortality Rates, 1834-90 29 Infant and Child Mortality by Birth Cohort, 1850-80

158 159

Maps, Tables, and Figures

xi

30 Breakdown of Census Variables for Migrant and Non-Migrant at Next Census, 1870-81

160

31 Recognition of 1870 Occupants by Surveyors

165

FIGURES

1 St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's Marriages by Month, 1834-49

63

2 St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's Burials, 1834-90

68

3 Cultivation per Person, 1835-70

83

4 St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's Marriage Rates, 1845-70

96

5 St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's Marriages by Month, 1850-69

98

6 St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's Birth Rates, 1845-70

101

7 Metis Emigration from Red River, 1830-69

117

8 Plot of Robe Prices and Metis Migration from Red River, 1847-69 9 Family Ties between Opponents of Riel

118 133

10 Alienation of Parish Lots, 1870-90

163

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Acknowledgments

A number of people have contributed to the research and writing of this book. I would like to thank the archivists and librarians at the National Archives of Canada, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Hudson's Bay Company Archives, Archives de 1'Archeveche de Saint-Boniface, Archives of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Minnesota Historical Society Archives, Montana Historical Society Archives, Glenbow Alberta Institute Archives, University of Alberta Archives, and the Winnipeg Land Titles Office. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Alberta provided research funding for those portions of the manuscript submitted for my doctoral dissertation. Special thanks are due Gerald Friesen of the History Department at the University of Manitoba, and John Foster of the History Department at the University of Alberta. Both were instrumental in developing my interest in Metis history, and both have read countless versions of the manuscript, providing invaluable advice and guidance. My intellectual debts to them are obvious throughout the book. As well, Barry Potyondi carefully read over the entire manuscript, and his suggestions have helped give the book whatever stylistic coherence it may have. David Hall and John Langdon, at the University of Alberta, and Jennifer Brown, at the University of Winnipeg, read an earlier version of the manuscript; their comments and suggestions, together with those of the anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript for University of Toronto Press and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, were most helpful. Gerald Hallowell of University of Toronto Press has been a great help to me in turning my dissertation into a book. As well, I would like to thank Ken Lewis, whose copy-editing helped bring consistency to the notes and bibliography.

xiv

Acknowledgments

Others who deserve mention and thanks include Denise Ens, Allan Ronaghan, and Jim Brown. The errors and gaps that remain are, of course, my responsibility.

MAP 1 Plan of the Red River Settlement Showing River-Lot Parishes, circa 1871

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Homeland to Hinterland

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Introduction

The large and growing literature on the history of the western Canadian Metis in the nineteenth century seems disproportionate to the size of the ethnic group. The attention, however, is well merited. Metis labour was a crucial aspect of the long-lived fur trade; the Red River Resistance of 186970, which helped shape Confederation, arose out of Metis concerns about their place in the new economic and social order; and the Riel Rebellion of 1885 remains the last time Canadians took up arms against their own government. As one historian has noted, the creation of a 'new nation' of mixed-blood people on the western prairies remains one of the most striking aspects of Canadian history.1 Most historical accounts of the Red River Metis have been written either from the perspective of the political history of Canada or from that of the fur trade. Although productive, these two approaches have presented different — even contradictory — portraits of the Metis. The first approach, concentrating on the political struggles of 1869-70 and the Rebellion of 1885, emphasizes Metis unity and the rise of a 'new nation' without adequately explaining the social and economic origins of the Metis which shaped those conflicts.2 Much of this literature has also emphasized the aboriginal aspect of the Metis heritage, usually in the context of conflict between natives and whites, primitivism and civilization. From George Stanley's The Birth of Western Canada, published in the 1930s, to Marcel Giraud's Le Metis canadien (1940s), to Joseph Kinsey Howard's Strange Empire (1950s), and finally to George Woodcock's GabrielDumont (1970s), the Metis have been stereotyped as a primitive people unable or unwilling to adjust to civilized life and capitalist society.3 The other approach, concentrating on the fur trade origins of the Metis, stresses ethnic diversity and the different cultural origins of the Metis.4

4

Homeland to Hinterland

With few exceptions, however, these studies seldom examine the Red River Metis past the mid-nineteenth century. One exception is Frits Pannekoek's A Snug Little Flock: The Social Origins of the Kiel Resistance of 1869-70.5 Pannekoek argued that the cause of the Riel Resistance of 1869-70 was not the racial and religious tension introduced by Canadian expansionists, but rather sectarian and racial conflict native to the Red River Settlement. He argued it was the church - particularly the Anglican clergy in the colony - that was responsible for the disintegration of Red River society. Anglican missionaries, intent on establishing a 'Little Britain in the Wilderness,' were instrumental in precipitating a conflict between the English-Protestant Metis and the French-Catholic Metis in the twenty years before 1869. Consequently, when resistance to the transfer of Rupert's Land arose, it escalated into a near civil war between mixed-blood families. Having forged a new identity under the tutelage of the Protestant missionaries, the English Metis saw themselves as English rather than mixed-bloods and saw their mission as liberating Red River from both the Hudson's Bay Company and the Roman Church. When the chance of joining Canada arose during 1868-9, the English Metis not only supported annexation but were prepared to stop Riel's opposition by force. While Pannekoek's portrait of the colony in disarray on the eve of the Riel Resistance was salutary, his overall argument remains unconvincing. Aside from the difficulty of accepting that the English Metis were rabidly anti-Catholic, even as they cooperated with the French Metis on biannual buffalo hunts, Pannekoek ignored the fact that Riel was also opposed by a significant number of French Metis. Pannekoek's account, concentrating on two sex scandals occurring in Red River in the 1850s and 1860s, ignored the more prosaic day-to-day existence that properly defined the Metis worlds. This study, focusing on Metis of the Red River, argues that the Metis participated with growing confidence in two worlds: one Indian and precapitalist, the other European and capitalist. Metis identity was not defined by biology, blood, or religion, but rather by the economic and social niche they carved out for themselves within the fur trade. For much of the nineteenth century, the Red River Settlement was considered a Metis homeland because living there allowed them to occupy this niche with assurance. Once the Red River Settlement ceased to provide important opportunities such as hunting, freighting, trading, and provisioning, the colony ceased to be a Metis homeland. In this sense, one might view Riel's efforts during 1869-70 as an attempt to reconstruct a Metis identity in political or constitutional terms as its social and economic bases were eroding.

Introduction

5

The book relates Metis family dynamics and identity to the introduction and rise of capitalism in the region. To do this, it takes as its starting point Irene Spry's argument regarding 'the great transformation,'6 which took place in the Canadian West from the 1840s to the 1890s. During this period, resources underwent a change from 'common property' resources to 'open access' resources, and, finally, to 'private property.'7 As Gerald Friesen has argued in his Canadian Prairies? the period after 1840 was an era in which the market economy and industrial capitalism 'recreated' the region of Western Canada. Here it is argued that the Metis adapted quickly to these changed economic conditions, and actually guided thd process and influenced the nature of change. While it is true that George Stanley and Marcel Giraud placed Metis history in the context of the expansion of an industrialized civilization, they saw the Metis only as unwilling victims in the path of capitalism. This study, by contrast, presents the Metis experience as central to that broader process of economic change. Rather than being passive victims of the actions of others, or simply a problem confronting the federal government, the Metis are characterized as active agents in their history and development. The economic changes of the 1840s in the western interior signalled increasing Metis participation in the world of European mercantile capitalism. This participation included greater Metis involvement in the new market economy in the region. In addition, the Metis underwent significant changes in household and family dynamics (and among some parishes a decline in subsistence agriculture). They also experienced increased geographic mobility. These changes are best understood as a change from a pre-capitalist 'subsistence' society to a capitalist market economy. The most essential economic feature of capitalism stressed here is 'production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize maximum profit.' 9 Thus defined, capitalism includes the following characteristics: private ownership and control of the economic instruments of production; that is to say, capital, economic activity designed to make profits, a market framework that regulates this activity, the appropriation of profits by the owners of capital, and the provision of labour by workers who are free agents.10 While the fur trade had always operated in the context of worldwide mercantile capitalism, the Metis had not been closely integrated into European trade networks. It was only in the 1840s, when the emergence of competitive markets established a new context for the Red River region, that the Metis became more closely integrated into the emerging industrial capitalist system. The penetration of the Northwest by American and Canadian markets increasingly integrated

6

Homeland to Hinterland

Metis labour, Metis production, and Metis property into the realm of capital. 'Proto-industrialization' is a concept that encompasses the Metis adaptive response to these new economic forces. This is the process of industrialization before the movement of large numbers of workers to factory employment.11 In Europe, the development of proto-industrialization varied from region to region or among crafts, but amidst all the differences it exhibited a common structural foundation. This was a close association between household production based on the family economy, on the one hand, and the capitalistic organization of trade, the putting out and the marketing of products, on the other.12 In Europe proto-industrialization was an outcome of the destabilization and decomposition of traditional peasant societies, and it represented the 'primary social relation of production' in the transition from traditional peasant society to industrial capitalism.13 Proto-industrialization was the industrialization of the 'cottage industry,' whereby manufacturing industries were located in the countryside, and production organized in cottage workshops. Mercantile capital organized the work and parcelled it out to family households. Men, women, and children combined the manufacturing of textiles, or leather goods, or metal wares, or similar items, with the traditional activity of subsistence farming. The essence of this cottage industry was that the labour behind it was flexible and cheap; therefore, its products were competitive in national and international markets. The functional interrelationships between the family economy and merchant capital gave this configuration the traits of a distinctive socio-economic system.14 This cottage industry preceded and sometimes led to modern industry and, as a result, has been labelled proto-industry. In some instances, however, the second phase did not occur; instead, rural industry decayed and gave rise to de-industrialization. While this model cannot be transformed simply into a historical category and mechanically applied to the Metis, the term nevertheless has value when used descriptively because it identifies a stage in the process of the transition from traditional pre-capitalist society to capitalism. Used in this general adjectival way, proto-industrialization offers a new perspective on Metis society. In the context of Red River, proto-industrialization emerged with the breakup of the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly, the establishment of new markets for furs, and increasing Metis involvement in the buffalo-robe trade. In particular, proto-industrialization was related to increasing Metis involvement in the production of buffalo robes for market, as it involved much intensive labour by all members of the family. This trade not only

Introduction

7

drew more and more Metis families away from Red River, but led to earlier marriages and larger families. Metis traders and merchants increasingly not only acquired finished robes from plains Indian bands and Metis hunting families, but also hired Metis women to process the green and untanned skins. The increasing importance of this rural or 'cottage industry' had significant repercussions for the maintenance of ethnic boundaries, the nature of the Metis response to the Riel Resistance of 1869-70, and the decline of the Red River Settlement as a Metis homeland. To carry out this analysis, I have concentrated on local economic and demographic evidence. While the focus of the book is the Metis of the Red River Settlement, my analysis takes place at the parish and family level. In particular, two Metis parishes are studied in detail and compared to each other and to the rest of the settlement. This allows not only for the differentiation of various cultural groupings and the inclusion of political conflict in the larger story, but also for an analysis of economic, demographic, and familial change. Only local history provides the level of detail needed to reveal fundamental historical processes. The parish has been selected as the unit of comparison because in Red River it was the primary ecclesiastical and civil entity, and the focal point of Metis social life. By the 1860s, the Red River Settlement consisted of almost twenty parishes, each with its own church, school, and communal life.' 1 On the advent of Confederation in 1870, the parish also became, for a time, the basis of political representation and administration. As such, parish boundaries are the most appropriate geographic boundaries for outlining the essential networks that give a community its identity. Two parishes-St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's-have been chosen for detailed analysis at the household and family level. These two parishes were selected for practical reasons. St Francois Xavier, located about thirtytwo kilometres west of the forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, was founded as a Catholic mission in 1824 and was composed chiefly of French Metis whose cultural antecedents were the Great Lakes Metis of the St Lawrence trading system. St Andrew's, located on the Red River between Fort Garry and Lake Winnipeg, was founded by the Anglican Church Missionary Society in 1829 and comprised chiefly English Metis16 formerly in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. While these two parishes do not encompass all the various Metis communities in the Red River Colony, they do represent a broad spectrum of the Metis experience in the settlement. Another practical consideration is that both have complete parish registers beginning in 1834-5. Although somewhat larger and more populous than many other parishes in the settlement, St Francois

8

Homeland to Hinterland

Xavier and St Andrew's were comparable in size, with each containing about 15 per cent of the total population of the settlement throughout the study period. In studying these two parishes in detail, and the Red River Settlement in general, two different but related strategies have been adopted. On one level, conventional qualitative sources and documents are used to analyse the evolving Metis economy and society in the Red River Settlement. On another level, because these conventional sources are particularly ill-suited for uncovering community and cultural dynamics at the family level (the Metis wrote few of the documents that record their history), I have used less conventional sources as well as techniques of quantification. In particular, I have integrated family-level statistical reports with parish registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths to reconstitute Metis families and to establish patterns of family formation, fertility, family size, mortality, and migration. In this way, the macro-economic change in the region can be related to the micro-level change in family behaviour. This study deals with the social and economic aspects of the Metis identity, rather than the question of racial identity. This has some implications for the terminology used. While the Metis and their contemporaries often referred to themselves by a variety of terms ('Country-born,' 'Hudson's Bay English,' 'Rupertslanders,' 'Half-breed,' 'Metis,' 'Brules,' 'Native'), this book uses 'Metis' (unaccented) as a generic term to designate all communities associated with fur trade opportunities to which neither indigenous Indian nor European households had responded. It therefore includes both the historical Metis who arose in the St Lawrence—Great Lakes trading system, and those individuals of mixed Indian and European ancestry from within the Hudson Bay trading system who held similar views as to their relations with Indians and Europeans but did not refer to themselves as Metis. The generic use of the term facilitates analysis and simultaneously allows for the differentiation of separate communities. This usage suits the study of smaller geographic communities that could contain Metis of distinctly different cultural orientations.17

ONE

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

Metis society in Red River evolved in response to the economic opportunities in the western interior after the 1820s and the institutional context of the Red River Settlement. The nature of the response was also conditioned by the cultural origins of the various Metis communities in the colony. Located on the banks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, the Red River Settlement was begun by Lord Selkirk in 1811 as a philanthropic scheme to provide a new life for thousands of dispossessed Scottish Highlanders. The settlement's survival and eventual growth, however, was tied more closely to the fur trade. Indeed, Selkirk, along with his brother-in-law, Andrew Colvile, tried to integrate their settlement into the Hudson's Bay Company trade. They envisioned that the colony would supply provisions and labour to the fur trade and, because of its strategic location, become a pivotal transshipment centre for plains provisions that had to be moved to the northern canoe routes by early summer.1 The North-West Company, whose Fort Gibraltar stood at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, immediately understood the threat posed by the Red River Settlement. Involved in violent competition for fur-trading supremacy with the Hudson's Bay Company, the Nor'Westers realized that an HBC colony astride their crucial provision supply route threatened their very existence. As soon as the first colonists arrived, late in 1811, the Nor'Westers vowed to bring about the colony's failure. Using freemen and plains Metis hunters, many of whom had been in the employ of the North-West Company, the Nor'Westers consistently harried and threatened the colonists. Only with the union of the Hudson's Bay Company and North-West Company in 1821 did the persecution end. The colony became a refuge for superfluous Hudson's Bay Company servants and their Metis families who were released from the company's

10

Homeland to Hinterland

service after its reorganization during the 1820s. Once competition ceased in the trade, the revitalized Hudson's Bay Company adopted the infant Selkirk colony for its own uses. To reduce the costs of labour and provisions in the fur trade, the company encouraged older and less able officers and servants to retire and move their mixed-blood families to Red River. Company officers hoped the Metis would come under the influence of churches, schools, and local government, and provide a docile workforce. Company servants, for their part, gravitated to the Red River Settlement because of the lack of other opportunities in the Northwest and the impossibility of taking their large families back to Britain or Lower Canada. As early as 1816, more than ninety servants of the Hudson's Bay Company petitioned Lord Bathurst to found a colony for them and their children on the grounds that they were fathers of large families and had hitherto brought up our Children at the different trading posts of the Company in the Habits and Duties of Civilized Life, but they are now become so numerous that it is found impossible for them to be supported in this way much longer, and unless we are by your Lordship's humane assistance enabled to form an Asylum for them of the nature of a Colony, they will in all probability be driven to the wretched necessity of throwing themselves on the Bounty of the Natives and be obliged to Augment the number of Savages, without possessing those Arts and Habits which render a Savage Life supportable.'2

Throughout the 1820s, former servants and their native families streamed into the colony as climate and the lack of opportunities and resources forced them to try to establish a settled existence. William Garrick confessed to Governor Simpson in 1820 'that nothing but the necessity of the times could ever have induced me to become a settler at the Red River. Unaccustomed to the labour (I shall find it hard).' 3 Catholic French-speaking Metis families, as well as Protestant Englishspeaking Metis families, settled into a way of life that combined subsistence agriculture with annual buffalo hunts. Originating from progenitors employed in the Montreal-based St Lawrence trading system, the French Metis came under the influence of Roman Catholic priests from Lower Canada who encouraged them to settle in river-lot parishes to the south and west of the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The English Metis, whose paternal ancestors were the British (largely Orkney) employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, were swayed by Anglican missionaries and settled in river-lot communities north of the forks on the Red River.

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

11

MAP 2 Plan Showing the Red River Settlement in 1857

This change to a more settled economy under the watchful eye of the parish clergy was completed by the mid-1830s.4 Yet while undeniably significant, the influence of the Catholic priests and the Protestant ministers was not all encompassing. For example, the Catholic clergy were instrumental in convincing the Pembina Metis to relocate to the Red River Settlement, and to accept church marriage and baptism, but were unable

12

Homeland to Hinterland

to prevent them from marrying outside the faith. Similarly, the Metis in St Andrew's ignored the exhortations of their Protestant ministers not to hunt buffalo. Administration of the Red River Settlement rested with the Governor and Council of Assiniboia. Assiniboia was the name given the original grant of land to Selkirk, encompassing 300,440 square kilometres in what is now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Minnesota. The Red River Settlement fell within these boundaries. Selkirk himself initially appointed the governor and council, but after the merger of the fur-trading concerns the Hudson's Bay Company assumed all responsibility for the colony and council. The governor was appointed from London, and he, in turn, appointed the members of the council. While remaining subordinate to the Northern Council of the Hudson's Bay Company, the Council of Assiniboia dealt with matters such as agricultural improvement and schools and, for a time, the administration of justice. After 1835, a rudimentary court system was established separate from the council. Despite its authoritarian structure, the council did try to represent the interests of the colonists. In the absence of a regular police force, however, the governor and council members understood that they could govern only with the consent of the Metis. In this, they were aided by the existing military organization of the Metis buffalo hunt, which functioned as an unofficial source of authority in the colony. When the Hudson's Bay Company took over the administration of the Red River Settlement in 1835, membership on the Council of Assiniboia was expanded to include representatives of the Metis. ORIGINS OF THE RED RIVER METIS

Though the ethnic roots of the different Metis communities are not yet clearly understood, some patterns of ethnogenesis are discernible. Throughout North America, intermarriage between Indians and Europeans accompanied the fur trade. It was virtually assured by the presence of adult European males isolated from European women and the hospitality of many Indian bands. Intermarriage, however, was not only a result of the scarcity of European women, but also an integral part of the fur trade. Based as the trade was on a commodity exchange between two culturally distinct groups of people, it engendered a mutually dependent economic relationship. Many fur trade practices took place within the structure of Indian social and political customs. Kinship was a major determinant in the trade and alliance structure of Amerindian societies. Fur

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

13

traders wintering in the Indian country found that marriage to an Indian woman not only cemented trade ties but also provided the trader with a much-needed source of labour. The Indian woman familiarized the fur trader with the customs and language of her tribe and performed important domestic tasks, such as providing the trader with moccasins, snowshoes, canoes, dressed furs, and food. In return, the Indian woman increased her prestige as she became a source of technology and goods for her band.3 It was a pattern initiated by the French on the St Lawrence and in the Maritimes, and repeated by the English when they established themselves on Hudson Bay in the seventeenth century. This accommodation of fur traders was not necessarily regarded as permanent by either the fur trader or the Indian bands, and the same individual could and sometimes did repeat these types of ritualized kinship attachments with other bands. The norm, however, was not casual, promiscuous contact, but the development of marital unions that gave rise to distinct family units - marriage 'a la facon du pays.' According to the custom of the country, this type of union closely followed traditional native marriage rites. A trader who wished to take an Indian wife had first to get the consent of her parents and then pay a bride price determined by the girl's relations. The bride price usually entailed some combination of trade goods. This type of marriage did not involve the exchange of marriage vows, but was solemnized by other native rituals. The trader usually visited the Indian camp to claim his wife, and the couple would then be escorted to the fort. Thereafter, they were considered husband and wife. Given that polygamy was common among many North American Indian groups, a native wife did not prevent further marriages 'a la facon du pays.' Frequent intermarriage between fur traders and Indians did not lead inevitably to separate, identifiable Metis communities. Some 'mixed-blood' progeny were raised among their mother's people and assumed an Indian lifestyle, while others were taken to European or American metropolitan centres by their fathers to be educated and assimilated into European society. Instead, the emergence of identifiable Metis communities awaited specific political and economic conditions. Recent studies have emphasized that, rather than being a widespread and natural phenomenon, the Metis as community was an infrequent, if not unique, socio-cultural product of particular events and circumstances. 6 The emergence of these distinct socio-cultural entities occurred both among the fur trade communities of the Great Lakes and in the river valleys of the Red and Saskatchewan Rivers along the northeastern fringe of the Great Plains. The dynamics of this community formation are best seen through an

14

Homeland to Hinterland

examination of the different patterns of fur trade contact; children born in the fur trade country experienced family and community relationships that varied according to the time, place, and fur trade company setting in which they matured. The Metis who settled at Red River had at least three identifiable European cultural antecedents. The early fur trade was dominated by the French, who spread out from the St Lawrence River. After the British defeat of the French in 1763, this trade operation was taken over by Highland Scottish traders who formed the North-West Company. The Hudson's Bay Company began with English employees but later relied on many Lowland and Orkney Scots. The varied relations between the traders of these three different fur trade organizations, their native wives, and their mixed-blood children assured that the various Metis communities would have distinct ethnic and cultural origins. During its first decades, New France contained a high proportion of young men, many of whom were engaged in the fur trade and entered into alliances with Indian women. While these traders sought both shortterm personal gratification and trade advantages, they expected neither that their familial obligations would be permanent nor that their alliances would lead naturally to independent Metis communities. The children born of these alliances were readily absorbed into the mothers' Huron matrilineage and raised in Huron villages.7 Conditions conducive to the formation of Metis communities emerged with the destruction of the Huron Confederacy after 1650. To replace their Huron trading partners, the French moved inland, where they wintered and traded with the various Indian bands. In time, these French clerks (commis) and voyageurs took over the role of the Indian trader in acquiring furs from the hunting bands and transporting them to Montreal. Peace between the French and the Iroquois after 1695 encouraged Algonquian Indians to form permanent villages near the shores of Lakes Michigan and Superior, and pulled the locus of the fur trade and its personnel away from Montreal and towards the Great Lakes. These traders loosened their ties with New France and formed more lasting bonds with each other and their Indian associates. They did not give themselves up to Indian society, but carved out a role as brokers among the Indian bands to the northwest and European society to the east. Establishing positions of influence at Michilimackinac, Sault Ste Marie, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and elsewhere, they worked primarily as traders, voyageurs, and clerks who journeyed to and lived among the Indian people. Through their monopolization of the middle occupational rungs of the fur trade system, these traders and their native families constructed a separate identity.

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

15

The crystallization of a Metis identity in the various communities along the Great Lakes occurred after the British conquest of New France and the fall of Michilimackinac to the British in 1763. The British takeover encouraged a pronounced exodus of Canadians and Metis from Michilimackinac and its environs to smaller communities along the shores of the Great Lakes. In these communities, the traders and their Metis families were left to follow their own social and economic customs. The establishment of permanent villages that were geographically separate from adjacent band villages was a hallmark of Metis development in the Great Lakes area. During the eighteenth century, the Metis of the Great Lakes became brokers between Indian hunters and Euro-Canadian merchants. Successive engagements with a fur trade entrepreneur (often an older kinsman) enabled the voyageur to establish an enduring marriage because he returned regularly to his wife and children and the Metis village. His children could then retrace the cycle by entering the fur trade, thereby producing a new generation of Metis mediators.8 Several factors encouraged the departure from the region of those Metis who wished to continue in the trade. Among these was the depletion of fur-bearing animals in the Great Lakes area, Indian cessions and removals, and American land speculation and settlement in the early nineteenth century. For example, as early as 1800 the Grignons, a Metis family that originated in the Great Lakes area, wintered as far west as the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the Pembina River in their search for furs. Many of the Great Lakes Metis pulled up stakes and moved to trading stations and new town-sites further west; a number migrated to Minnesota and Red River. Metis surnames in Mackinac birth and marriage registers of that time later appear in the parish registers of St Francois Xavier in the Red River Settlement (e.g., Amiot, Blondeau, Chaboyer, Hamelin, St Germain, Lapierre, Dubois, Laframboise, Poitras, Ducharme, Pelletier, Rocheblave, etc.). The British conquest of New France did more than provide a catalyst for Metis group identity in the Great Lakes; it also opened a new phase in the Canadian fur trade and in fur trade family history. Between 1760 and 1780, political and economic control of the Montreal trade passed to anglophone leaders among whom Highland Scots predominated. French Canadians were still employed as engages for the canoe brigades and labour at the inland posts, but they now seldom rose in the company ranks to become partners or officers. When the British Nor'Westers travelled into Indian country, they, like the French, allied themselves with Indian women for the same personal and trade reasons. As fur trade of-

16

Homeland to Hinterland

ficers, they also carried their loyalties, connections, and familial attitudes with them. Unlike the French, however, they infrequently developed permanent attachments in the Indian country. Nonetheless, some did establish longer-term relationships with Indian women and ensured that the household-women and children-accompanied them as they moved from post to post. On occasion, these marriages lasted a lifetime.9 Many children of these alliances were absorbed into Indian society, while others were sent to Montreal for baptism and an education. Nevertheless, by 1800 the growth of fur trade domesticity had produced a large population of Indian women and mixed-blood children who lived near NorthWest Company posts. This situation caused great expense to the company, which responded, in 1806, by forbidding its men to marry Indian women. Instead, they were encouraged to marry mixed-blood daughters already dependent on the post. This policy began a trend of generational continuity in the growing mixed-blood population around the posts.10 On their retirement from active fur trading, North-West Company traders faced difficult decisions regarding their familial attachments. While some decided to settle with their families in Indian country, as had been the case with some French Canadians, most Highland Scot clerks and bourgeois did not consider this alternative seriously. The Highland Scots who rose to prominence in the North-West Company were very different from the Orkney Islanders recruited by the Hudson's Bay Company. Immigrating to the American Colonies in the period after 1763, and fleeing to Canada during the American Revolution, those Highlanders who entered the fur trade in this period were largely Roman Catholics from Glengarry and other parts of Inverness-shire in Scotland. Their strong clan and kin ties produced an extensive network of fur trade families who dominated the North-West Company after the 1780s. On their retirement, most chose to live near family and kin either in Canada or Britain.11 Some took their families back to Canada or Europe, but many placed their wives and mixed-blood children in the hands of another company person-a practice known as 'turning off.' These fur trade family practices fostered the emergence of distinct Metis groups. Although the system of encouraging marriage to the mixed-blood daughters of company men, and of turning off wives to fur trade associates staying in the West, provided the mixed-blood women with some security in the North-West Company fur trade system, their mixed-blood brothers faced greater difficulties. Because of the limited number of positions in the fur trade, and the North-West Company practice of hiring most of its voyageurs orjpngages in Montreal, mixed-blood sons of com-

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

17

pany servants found it difficult to establish a place for themselves in the trade. To survive, they needed the skills of the Indian hunter, which they had probably acquired by living with the males of their mothers' band. Their place there, however, was unsure since, with the evolution of family hunting territories,12 succession was probably delineated through the male line. In such cases, the mixed-blood male whose claim descended from his mother had to move on. If he wished to be something more than a hanger-on at a fur trade post he, and others like him, had to move westward to the plains and become a provisioner of the fur brigades. Another path to this same juncture was that of Euro-Canadians who, on leaving the fur-trading companies, chose to 'go free' with their families in the interior. Often having spent most of their lives in the West, they had few ties pulling them back to Canada. These 'freemen,' as they were called, usually had some kinship ties to Indian bands in the area, which helped to assure their safety as they carved out a niche as suppliers of furs and provisions to fur-trading companies. Forming relationships with other freemen in this trade, they established enduring households and communities in the interior much as they had done on the Great Lakes. These freeman households and communities would later produce a generation of buffalo hunters who became the plains Metis.13 By the early 1800s, the mixed-blood offspring of the North-West Company were recognized as a distinct Metis group. This status corresponded to the early efforts by members of this group to assert themselves socially and politically in the Red River area. Here they began to settle as semiindependent buffalo hunters and suppliers of the fur trade, as well as occasional employees of the North-West Company. The families of Cuthbert Grant, Angus McGillis, Pierre Pangman, and Alexander Breland represent this group of Metis, who would later settle in the Parish of St Francois Xavier. The mixed-blood descendants of the Hudson's Bay Company also settled in the Red River Settlement and developed a Metis identity, but their evolution assumed a different pattern. Some eventually identified themselves as 'Country-born' or 'Half-breed' to distinguish themselves from the Metis who had originated in the North-West Company trading system. At an early date, posts on Hudson Bay were fortified residential enclaves organized by military and semi-monastic ideals. The official policy of the company dictated non-fraternization between Indian women and Britishborn officers and servants. The realities of life on the Bay, however, led to a more practical unofficial policy that saw frequent intermarriage between the two groups.14

18

Homeland to Hinterland

The Homeguard Cree-those Indian bands who had taken up yearround residence on the shores of Hudson Bay to supply the various HBC posts with provisions-worked out an arrangement with the British-born employees. Adult males of an Indian band permitted British-born males to consort with Indian women only in the context of a marital relationship. Such a relationship benefited the Indian women, who thus secured access to the warehouse of the trading post. In return, Indian wives served as a conduit for small furs and goods such as toboggans, snowshoes, and canoes. In spite of the many acculturative forces that influenced the Homeguard Cree, their ways were firmly tied to Indian traditions. Usually the children of these marriages became enculturated in the ways of the band. While Homeguard Cree bands were a biologically mixed people by the eighteenth century, they remained culturally within the Cree context.15 The emergence of a distinct Metis community demanded a sequence of events that directed the Homeguard Cree along divergent paths. This began with the removal of the Hudson's Bay Company's trade operations to inland posts after 1790. This move resulted from intense competition with Montreal traders and caused a labour crisis in the Hudson's Bay Company. Not only did the company need servants to staff these new posts, it also needed a large workforce on the boats bringing trade goods inland and furs back out. To obtain this labour, the company turned to the Homeguard Cree, particularly to those mixed-bloods with some knowledge of its labour system. These mixed-blood children had gained a knowledge of the paternalistic and hierarchical social structure of the Hudson's Bay Company through their association with the fur trade posts. As such, they were well suited to inland service. Their family ties to both British-born officers and servants, and to the surrounding Indian bands created, moreover, a unique social world in the HBC posts that promoted the creation of a Metis identity.16 By the early nineteenth century, British-born traders and mixed-blood traders possessed distinct values and attitudes. The British-born valued monetary gain above all, while mixed-bloods considered the social aspects of work most important. The mixed-bloods had developed an ethos epitomized by the lifestyle of the Indian trader. They had internalized the values of the British patriarchal household that had been transferred to the Hudson Bay trading posts. Day-to-day relations among men at a trading post were governed by an authoritarian social hierarchy, presided over by the patriarchal Indian trader. Mixed-bloods saw him as a man without peer,

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

19

a man of immeasurable wealth and power. For many young mixed-bloods born and raised in or around a trading post, the Indian trader was the ideal whom they strove to emulate. With kin ties to previous Indian traders and with an education equal or superior to that of their British forefathers, they believed themselves destined to occupy this lofty position after they had worked their way up the ranks. There were, however, too many mixed-bloods vying for the available positions. By 1810, upward social mobility in the fur trade was ending as the governors of the Hudson's Bay Company tried to transform the company into a 'modern' administrative organization. In the process, they hired more and more of their upper-level servants in Britain, thus closing off opportunities for the mixed bloods in the West.17 The amalgamation of the Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies in 1821 marked the final step in the historical and cultural process that moved some mixed-bloods to adopt a Metis identity. This union initiated the migration of hundreds of mixed-bloods from the posts of the Hudson Bay trading system to the Red River Settlement. Many of these former servants settled on a site that later became the Parish of St Andrew's. Frustrated in their attempts to become Indian traders in the Hudson's Bay Company, many chose alternative means of achieving this goal. Under the influence of evangelical Anglican missionaries, these Metis attempted to build a new livelihood and, witn it, a new and more congenial society. ( H E E S T A B L I S H M E N T OF THE PARISH OF ST FRANCOIS XAVIER

Both the French-Catholic and English-Protestant Metis settled in the numerous parishes that made up the Red River Settlement. The French-Metis parish of St Francois Xavier was located on the banks of the Assiniboine River about 24 to 32 kilometres west of the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Also known as the White Horse Plain, this site was first settled in 1814 when a small group of Canadian freemen and Metis, headed by Andre Poitras, established themselves on a concession granted by Selkirk. The North-West Company later convinced them to abandon the site as the company opposed any settlement in the area.18 In 1818 four former HBC servants from Brandon House settled in this locality, specifically on the north bank of the Assiniboine some 32 kilometres from the forks. Comprising Magnus and John Spence, William Corrigal, John Flett, and their native families, this group wished to be close to the wintering grounds of the buffalo, yet near enough to the forks to benefit from the

20

Homeland to Hinterland

protection of the Red River Colony. Their temporary village was named Birsay, in honour of Magnus Spence's home parish in the Orkney Islands.19 The settlement, however, received permanence and most of its distinguishing features with the migration of Metis from Pembina on the Red River. Pembina, at the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, had always been more populous than the Red River Settlement as it was the principal rendezvous point for freemen and Metis hunters on their way to the summer plains buffalo hunt. In 1819 there were forty families and three hundred persons settled there.20 This large Metis population became a concern to the Hudson's Bay Company after a survey, conducted in accord with the boundary line laid down by the Convention of 1818, determined that Pembina lay in the territory of the United States. Fearing that the Metis of Pembina would take advantage of their new citizenship to flout the company's trade regulations, the Hudson's Bay Company decided to remove their trading post from Pembina. The company also pressured the Catholic clergy of St Boniface to move their Metis parishioners to the Red River Settlement.21 In response, Bishop Provencher ordered the Pembina mission to close and encouraged the Metis there to move to the Red River Settlement.22 With no trading post or mission left, most Metis followed their priest to the Red River Settlement.23 Provencher initially suggested Lake Manitoba as a likely site to resettle these Metis, as it offered both hunting and fishing possibilities, but John Halkett, the Hudson's Bay Company official in charge, opposed this suggestion as the colony on the Red River remained underpopulated. Instead, he proposed a location on the Red River about 24 kilometres below the forks where the company was planning to settle its former servants.24 By then the Red River Settlement consisted of a few Scottish settlers sponsored by Lord Selkirk, the Swiss and German colonists of the disbanded De Meuron regiment brought out to defend the settlers from the NorthWest Company, and a few French-Canadian freemen and Metis who lived around the first Catholic mission. The Scottish settlers had taken up land on the west side of the Red River just north of the forks at Frog Plain. This would later become part of the parishes of St John's and Kildonan. The freemen and Metis established themselves on a grant of land assigned by the Catholic Church on the east bank of the Red River opposite the forks. The Swiss and German colonists of the disbanded De Meuron regiment settled to the east of the Metis where the Seine enters the Red River. In honour of the patron saint of the Germanic people, the mission was named St Boniface. In all, there were only a few hundred people in the settlement before the arrival of the Pembina Metis.

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

21

Most of the Pembina Metis decided to settle on the Assiniboine River west of the forks at what would become the Parish of St Francois Xavier. To assist them, the Hudson's Bay Company granted their leader, Cuthbert Grant, a tract of land in this location. The son of a prominent North-West Company trading partner and a plains Indian woman, Grant was born in 1797 and educated in Scotland (it is said), whence he returned to the Northwest and the fur trade. During the years of intense competition and violence involving the Hudson's Bay Company and North-West Company, Grant led the plains Metis in opposing the strictures that the Hudson's Bay Company and governor of Assiniboia were imposing on the movement of pemmican and buffalo hunting. It was Cuthbert Grant who led the Metis in the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816, when the governor of the colony and nineteen settlers were killed. These actions prevented Grant from joining the new Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, when the two companies merged. Yet Grant was considered valuable to the fur-trading company because he exerted considerable influence over the Pembina Metis. The company gave Grant the tract of land in the hope that he could persuade his countrymen to settle in British territory and take up agriculture. Such a development offered the Hudson's Bay Company more control over the Metis and curtailed their trade with American concerns in contravention of the company's monopoly. The tract conveyed to Cuthbert Grant in 1824 was on the banks of the Assiniboine, 19 kilometres west of Fort Garry. It extended 10 kilometres westward along either side of the river. There Grant settled the Metis migrants from Pembina and the Northwest, assigning each settler one of the river lots (241.4 metres wide) running 3.22 kilometres (two miles) back from the river. Grant's house, which was located on the north bank of the Assiniboine River some 27 kilometres from the forks, became the centre of the settlement. To the east lay Angus McGillis's lot. McGillis was a Catholic and French-speaking Scot from Canada who had married a Metis woman and decided to 'go free' and stay in the West after leaving the employ of the North-West company. He was the father of Marie McGillis, Cuthbert Grant's wife. Beyond McGillis's lot lay those of his sons, and beyond that the lots of Francois Paul, Pierre Falcon, and Alexander Breland, all prominent French Metis and freemen. To the west were the lots reserved for the Catholic mission, and beyond that lived Urbain Delorme, one of the pre-eminent plains hunters. 23 These Metis families not only settled and built houses, but broke land and farmed. This move towards more permanent settlement resulted from the decline of economic opportunities in the 1820s and 1830s. The Hud-

22

Homeland to Hinterland

Mr Belcourt's church, White Horse Plain, I7june 1845. This was the second, more substantial, church and school built at St Francois Xavier.

son's Bay Company continued to reduce its workforce, and the market for furs and produce remained limited. Although the buffalo hunt was still the mainstay of the Metis economy, they increasingly combined their biannual hunting expeditions with small-scale farming. By 1827 the settlement consisted of 19 permanent families with a total of 111 inhabitants. Cuthbert Grant was cultivating 34 acres, Angus McGillis 20, and Alexander Poitras 4.26 By 1832 the settlement had grown to 57 families (294 individuals) and, by 1835, to 102 families (504 individuals) who worked 594 acres.27 In 1824 the settlers at St Francois Xavier first received church services. Father Picard Destroismaison, who was stationed in St Boniface, ministered to their needs. Since the settlement did not have its own church, Destroismaison conducted services in Cuthbert Grant's home. Beginning in 1827, Father Jean-Bap tiste Harper spent winters in the settlement. During the summer, however, he ministered to the congregation only on Sun-

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

23

days, as most settlers were frequently away on the buffalo hunt. In 1829 a chapel was built, and in 1834 the mission officially became the Parish of St Frangois Xavier, served full-time by a priest. Thereafter, the resident priest maintained separate registers for the parish. Father Charles-Edouard Poire, the new parish priest, regularly accompanied the Metis on their biannual buffalo hunts. 28 THE E S T A B L I S H M E N T OF THE PARISH OF ST A N D R E W ' S

In 1823 a large-scale migration of former Hudson's Bay Company servants to the Red River Settlement led to the establishment of several new communities north of the forks. This migration was a direct result of the Hudson's Bay Company's retrenchment after the union with the NorthWest Company, as surplus posts were closed and excess manpower was dismissed. Initially, these former HBC servants and their native families settled near Fort Garry. As more newcomers arrived, the settlement spread northward along the Red River. The river lots of the Highland Scots or Kildonan settlers interrupted this pattern of settlement north of Point Douglas, but it continued again a few kilometres farther north near Frog Plain. In 1821 the Rev. John West established the first Anglican mission near Point Douglas, three kilometres below the forks. This mission, initially called the 'Upper Church,' later became known as the Parish of St John's. A few kilometres farther north, the Rev. David Jones began a second Anglican mission, later known as 'Middle Church.' This mission subsequently became the Parish of St Paul's. As settlement spread farther down the river to a place known as Grand Rapids, the Anglican Church Missionary Society established yet another mission. By 1828, Rev. William Cockran had begun making pastoral visits to the growing community there, which would later become known as the Parish of St Andrew's. An Anglican missionary of humble origin, Cockran was convinced that the evangelization of the Metis could not proceed before they had become 'civilized'; to him this implied a sedentary agricultural way of life. In 1829, after a dispute with Jones over the importance of the mission farm, Cockran moved permanently to the Rapids. There he established what became known as the 'Lower' or 'Rapids Church.' 29 Cockran built a parsonage, and by 1832 a church measuring 15.2 by 7.7 metres had been completed. He also acquired a considerable piece of land near his own house for a mission farm. This farm was intended not only to support his own family and a future school, but also to intro-

24

Homeland to Hinterland

MAP 3 Detail of Plan Showing the Parish of St Andrew's in 1857

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

25

St Andrew's Church, circa 1858. This was the second church built in the parish.

duce his parishioners to agricultural labour and practices. By 1833 Cockran had cultivated twenty acres, erected a stockade for livestock, and built a small grist mill to grind corn. This training in agriculture was urgent, Cockran believed, since many of the English Metis, having grown up around northern trading posts, had little experience in farming.30 His promotion of agriculture was effective, and most families in the parish were cultivating some land of their own by 1835. According to Cockran, those retired servants and families living at the Rapids were less 'civilized' or European than those living near Middle Church. They were also poorer. The women were nearly all Indian or Metis and little acquainted with a settled economy.31 This native component of the parish also tied the community to the hunting and fishing economy. Near the end of 1835, Cockran reported that there were 102 families in the parish, only 43 of which had European heads. There was also only one European woman in the parish.'-

26

Homeland to Hinterland

Mr McDermot's store near Fort Garry, circa 1858. Note the post-on-sill construction. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that the inhabitants of St Andrew's, like those of St Francois Xavier, developed a mixed economy of subsistence farming combined with buffalo hunting and seasonal labour. The frequent failure of crops and the unreliable nature of the buffalo hunt made it sensible to participate in both. Because of the communal nature of the buffalo hunt, even the English Metis from the northern Hudson's Bay Company posts became adept buffalo hunters. Indeed, throughout the 1830s Cockran repeatedly complained that most of his male congregation was absent on the hunt or working in the boats during the summer months.33 By the 1830s, the parish communities of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's had become focal points in Metis society. Each had its own school and communal life. Friends and relatives settled near each other on the narrow river lots. Most of the houses were adequately built and resembled small cottages with bark or thatched roofs. Built in the 'Red River frame' style, the log walls of these cottages were coated with mud and whitewashed. Red River frame (or post-on-sill construction), consisting primarily of equally spaced log uprights tenoned into a sill with horizontal logs slid between the uprights, was widely used in the fur trade because it was versatile, economical, and easily achieved. It made use of short, small logs - an important consideration outside heavily wooded areas - and

The Metis and the Formation of the Red River Colony

27

placed no restriction on building size. A single man with a few portable tools could do most of the work himself.34 The homes of the poorer Metis, and of those who lived in the settlement for only a few months of the year, were cruder, resembling wintering shanties rather than permanent homes. Built of rough poplar and spruce logs notched at the corners, these small one-room shacks usually had earthen floors, few windows, and low roofs without gables. By contrast, wealthier Metis had by the 1840s panelled their walls with rough cast lumber and had windows facing the road. Twenty years later, many Metis had neat multi-room dwellings.35 To a large extent, then, the Red River Colony took its shape and character from the various Metis communities that comprised the settlement. At a time when there were few opportunities in the fur trade or a market for agricultural produce, Red River served as a refuge for the Metis families of the Northwest, regardless of origin. Despite the different cultural backgrounds of the Metis who sought refuge in Red River in the 1820s and 1830s, the Metis communities were bound together by common elements. In general, these were economic forces. Most groups had turned to Red River because there were few opportunities elsewhere. Red River offered not only the possibility of an education for their children and the promise of a regular religious life, but an economic niche in the fur trade. Here on river-lot farms they could pursue a way of life that relied on subsistence farming and the biannual buffalo hunts. The surplus of the hunt could be traded to the Hudson's Bay Company for other goods, and many Metis in the settlement earned a livelihood working on the boats of the company. Here, in contradistinction to the life of the trading post or of the more nomadic lifestyle of a plains hunter, the Metis settled in permanent village communities under the watchful eye of the parish priest or minister.

TWO

The Red River Peasantry: Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

By 1835 the Metis communities of Red River had settled into a new way of life. Residence in the colony was, in fact, central to their involvement in the hunting, farming, tripping, and provisioning niches in the fur trade. In the absence of other economic opportunities and competitive markets, the culturally diverse communities came to share remarkably similar characteristics. Regardless of their origins, all Red River Metis came to be united by common land tenure, economy, and social structure. Semi-autonomous village communities and cultures were the primary elements of their way of life. Land tenure was based on grants and sales from Lord Selkirk and the Hudson's Bay Company, on squatters' rights, and on a tradition of communal jurisdiction. Its economic basis was a household economy comprising small-scale agriculture, the buffalo hunt, and seasonal labour for the Hudson's Bay Company. It was, in effect, a type of peasant society and economy whose primary aim was meeting the subsistence needs of the family rather than making a profit. Economic activity was dominated by the need to satisfy the requirements of each production unit. Each production unit was, at the same time, a consumer unit. Therefore budgeting was to a high degree qualitative; it balanced family subsistence needs with a substantive distaste for manual labour that determined the intensity of cultivation and the size of the net product. As soon as the equilibrium point was reached, continuing to work was pointless.1 Although the Red River Settlement was connected to commercial capitalism through the Hudson's Bay Company, a parallel and contradictory economic system existed at the household level. This peasant or subsistence economy should not, however, be considered as 'subsistence' in the strict sense of the word. As in most peasant economies, there was a dual

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

29

orientation to market and household.2 Each Metis family not only used produce from the buffalo hunt and the farm to feed itself, but also exchanged it in Red River for other goods. The Metis also engaged in other activities, such as occasional wage labour. They participated to a limited degree in the wage labour system of the Hudson's Bay Company by hiring on for a specific period (boat trip, cart brigade), for which they received a credit in the company's account books that was usually spent for provisions or goods in the following months. As Gerald Friesen has noted, 'this labour system might be described as typical of a non-industrial society, and, in its informal work discipline and rough measures of time, not far removed from that of the casual farm labourer or cottage artisan in 17th century England.'3 Most Metis families aimed at subsistence rather than re-investment. They might sell a portion of their crop or hire themselves out to the Hudson's Bay Company, but they used the proceeds chiefly to buy the goods and services they needed to subsist and maintain their social status. The family remained the main unit of production in a non-capitalistic mode of production. 4 Although the Hudson's Bay Company routinely purchased pemmican, dried meat, and agricultural produce from the settlers of Red River, its annual demand varied little even though the population of the colony increased rapidly.5 By the 1830s the growth of Metis population, and the attendant increase in the production of pemmican and dried meat, had so saturated the limited market that the Hudson's Bay Company refused to buy much of the pemmican offered to it.6 The company was also not able to absorb much of the agricultural produce of the settlement. The demand of the trading posts was small and easily satisfied. Company grain purchases seldom amounted to more than 1,000 to 1,330 bushels. These purchases initially amounted to 16 bushels of grain per settler, but as the population grew this fell to 12 bushels, then to 8 bushels; by 1845 it was even below this level.7 In later years the company further depressed demand by maintaining large company-run farms at both Lower Fort Garry and St Francois Xavier to supply its provisioning needs. Although trade with the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1830s enabled the Metis to purchase manufactured clothing and commodities, their production from the hunt and the farm remained oriented mainly to household consumption. In 1823, when William Keating travelled through the settlement, he noted there were no cash transactions in the colony. Wheat, along with other commodities, was 'traded in the way of exchange for some other commodity.' 8 Given the level of technology at the time and the absence of any real market, this was a rational course of action.

30

Homeland to Hinterland

The NorWester, looking back on the agricultural history of the colony, commented in 1859: In one respect, however, the farmers appear to have been generally agreed. We refer to their determination to raise little more than enough of produce for home consumption; and so strictly did they carry out their resolves-so nicely did they gauge the needed home supplies-that last year the temporary presence in the Settlement of a couple of exploring parties and a few batches of fortune-hunters ... almost created a famine.9

While it is true that the Metis were already participating in an illicit fur trade, until the 1840s this trade was largely circumscribed by the efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company, the inaccessibility of alternative markets, and the lack of capital and marketing skills on the part of the Metis. James Sinclair and Cuthbert Grant, and perhaps one or two other Metis, operated small trading concerns, but these few individuals were allowed to trade only with the permission of the Hudson's Bay Company and depended on getting most of their supplies via HBC ships. One of the conditions the company set in allowing Grant to trade was that he keep other Metis out of the business. LAND T E N U R E IN RED RIVER

The basis of land tenure in the Red River Settlement was as complex as it was inconsistent. Although the Selkirk settlers had settled in Red River in 1812, five years passed before they concluded a treaty with the resident Cree and Saulteaux Indians. It was only the dispute with the North-West Company over the legitimacy of the colony that moved Selkirk to treat with the Indians at all, as he believed a treaty necessary to remove the threat of Indian violence. 10 When Selkirk arrived at Red River, the Saulteaux Indians resident there informed him that they did not own the land, having only arrived in the area some thirty years before. According to them, it belonged to the Cree. They agreed to sell only when Selkirk informed them that, since they were living on the soil, he considered them masters of it.11 By this treaty Peguis, a chief of the Saulteaux, ceded to Selkirk a two-mile-wide strip on either side of the Red River from Lake Winnipeg to the junction of the Red and the Assiniboine. Although the treaty reads two 'English Statute Miles,' it was later argued that the Indians had no concept of measurement in miles, and that the actual agreement made with the Indians stipulated land extending back from the river bank 'as

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

31

far as a man standing on the bank could see under the belly of a horse out into the plain.' li! Les Grandes Oreilles, another Saulteaux chief, ceded a similar strip from the Forks to Pembina. La Robe Noire sold two miles on either side of the Assiniboine River from the Forks to a point beyond Portage La Prairie. Finally, the Red Lake chief sold a strip on either side of the Red River from Pembina south to the Red Lake River. In return the various chiefs were to receive a quit-rent consisting of one hundred pounds of tobacco each year.13 This treaty dealt only with two miles on either side of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers; there remained some confusion as to who owned the land outside the two miles. According to Andrew McDermott, a former HBC servant and prominent independent trader in the settlement,14 the Hudson's Bay Company claimed all the land beyond the two miles as well, except that which they had sold.15 Clearly, settlers felt they had rights to land outside the two-mile limit. In 1858 Eske-puck-a-koos, who styled himself as the chief of the heathen Indians at Red River, as opposed to the Christian Indians under Peguis, published a manifesto asking remuneration in return for permission to cut hay outside the two-mile limit. He also threatened to burn the hay if this were not respected. Peguis intervened and asserted that the settlers had a right to cut hay by his permission."' Under Lord Selkirk's direction, lands were granted freehold to colonists in plots of up to one hundred acres. As Red River increasingly became a refuge for retired Hudson's Bay Company servants in the 1820s, Governor Simpson retained joint power with Selkirk's representatives to grant and sell lands. 17 Grants to former servants of the company varied from as little as 3 chains (60.35 metres) of river frontage, with as few as 30 acres, to 12-chain lots containing upwards of 200 acres for former chief factors. In 1822 the Council of the Northern Department of the Hudson's Bay Company recommended that grants of lands to former servants be restricted to 30 acres or 3 chains.18 Settlers usually supplemented this by purchasing an additional 3 chains from the company. By 1833 Rev. William Cockran, the Anglican clergyman in charge of the Rapids congregation (later to become the Parish of St Andrew's) commented on the usual practice there: 'He receives gratis a piece of land, 33 yards in breadth, and two miles in length. This is too narrow to fence and make a farm of. Therefore the dust of the balance, which has been collecting for 30 years, must be swept out at once to procure another piece, to add to his gratuity.'19 In return for a grant of land, the settler was also required to fulfil some obligations. In 1822 the governor of Assiniboia, Andrew Bulger, informed the bishop of St Boniface that the one condition applying to all land grants

32

Homeland to Hinterland

in Assiniboia stipulated that the grantee had to settle upon the land and cultivate a portion of it. He noted that many former French-Canadian and Metis company servants were also bound by their HBC land grants to pay an annual rent of five bushels of wheat per hundred acres. Additionally, grants were accompanied by the obligation to provide six days of labour for the upkeep of the colony's roads and bridges. Alternatively, settlers could buy their land outright for the fixed price of five shillings sterling per acre.20 When the Hudson's Bay Company took over administration of the colony in 1835, this was the established policy towards land tenure. The company then ordered a re-survey of the settled portions of the settlement and began entering land grants and sales in a land register. In 1823 William Kempt had prepared a survey and plan of the Red River Settlement, but it was inaccurate. Ten years later there were few traces left of Kempt's survey, as the flood of 1826 had obliterated most of them. Lots ran into each other, and no one was certain about their own boundaries. The re-survey of 1836 was meant to quiet these disputes and bring order to the settlement process.21 Land regulations changed little over the years, except that by the 1850s the price of land had risen to 7s 6d sterling per acre and title was given in the form of a lease for 999 years. The conditions in the lease were: 1st. That one-tenth of the land is to be brought into cultivation within five years; 2nd. That trading or dealing with Indians or others so as to violate the chartered privileges of the Company, be forsworn; 3rd. Obedience to all laws of the Company; 4th. Contributions to expenses of public establishments in due proportion; 5th. All trade or traffic in any kind of skins, furs, peltry, or dressed leather, except under licence of the Company, forbidden; 6th. Land not to be disposed of or let, or assigned without Consent of the Company.22 While this was the official policy of the Hudson's Bay Company, there was also a tradition of land tenure based on occupation. Those inhabitants who squatted on lands unclaimed by another were left undisturbed. Governor Simpson considered it inadvisable to interfere with this practice until real purchasers appeared, as any attempt to remove the squatters was bound to result in resistance.23 By 1857 Governor Simpson stated that the company could not prevent squatting nor should it endeavour to try to prevent it. By the 1860s, it was recognized that beyond the surveyed limits of the settlement, squatters could settle without paying for the land, although claims were not to exceed 12 chains.

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33

The method of land disposition in the Parish of St Francois Xavier was another exception to the official policy of the Hudson's Bay Company. Cuthbert Grant viewed this land as his personal seigneury and had parcelled out the land to the displaced Metis of Pembina in 12-chain lots.24 This method of disposition later created a good deal of confusion as the company officers still regarded themselves as proprietors, whereas settlers laboured under the belief that they owned the land through Cuthbert Grant. 25 This hodgepodge system of land tenure was generally accepted by all groups in the settlement. It was only during periods of tension and uncertainty that some Metis rose to speak out against the consensus. In 1835, when the Hudson's Bay Company took over the administration of the colony from Selkirk's heirs, some Metis feared this change in administration might threaten their unofficial claims to land. They petitioned Governor Simpson for assurances of legal title to their lands.26 Simpson's reply stated simply that those who had received grants or bought their land from the Hudson's Bay Company would be assured of a title deed. He made no mention of squatters' rights, but he likewise failed to indicate that the Company was about to change its administration of lands.27 When the Metis realized that no action would be taken against those who had squatted on unoccupied lands, the matter was dropped. The issue came up again in 1860 when the possibility arose that Red River might become a crown colony. At that time, a dispute developed about whether Peguis had ever actually sold the land on which the settlement was located. Through an interpreter, Peguis claimed that the Indians had only rented or allowed Selkirk and his settlers to reside on it. The bargain that had been struck was, in his view, only preliminary to a final bargain. The Metis who took this view argued that the Hudson's Bay Company therefore had no legal title to the land, and that its system of land registration was void. The issue was widely debated in the settlement with Metis on both sides of the question. 28 When crown colony status proved illusory, the matter was dropped, but briefly flared up again in 1861 when the Hudson's Bay Company tried to exact payment for all lands occupied in the colony at the rate of 7s 6d per acre. If not paid, the company threatened to sell these lands to the first purchaser. This set off 'indignation' meetings in several parishes, at which the Metis decided that no monies should be paid, that the Hudson's Bay Company had no right to the land, never having purchased it, and that the Metis had a right to it, being 'the descendants of the original lords of the soil.'29 In the face of this opposition, the company backed down. It was this type of protest that was resuscitated in the

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summer of 1869 when it became apparent that the Hudson's Bay Company was preparing to transfer Rupert's Land to Canada.30 Land holding in Red River thus followed a pattern of peasant tenure. The inhabitants of Red River managed their river-lot farms as they wished, but were subject to the leasehold requirements of the Hudson's Bay Company that deprived them of uncontested ownership.31 Visitors to Red River stressed the organic nature of this community. J. Wesley Bond, a secretary to Governor Alexander Ramsey of Minnesota Territory, visited the settlement in 1851 and described Red River as a long, serpentine village: Farmhouses, with barns, stables, hay, wheat, and barley-stacks, with small cultivated fields or lots, well fenced, are [sic] stretched along the meandering river, while the prairies far off to the horizon are covered with herds of cattle, horses, & c., the fields filled with a busy throng of whites, half-breeds and Indians-men, squaws, and children-all reaping, binding, and stacking the golden grain.32

For his part, Governor Ramsey wrote that the Red River Settlement resembled nothing so much as a long suburban village typical of those in pictures of English country villages.33 These river-lot villages combined elements of the French-Canadian riverlot survey and the Scottish system of infield-outfield agriculture.34 In this old Celtic mode of land management, the house and barn of the farmstead stood by the infield, often at the edge of a stream in a valley. The infield was usually cropped, while the outfield, lying to the rear, was most often reserved for pasture land. Beyond this, in the hills, farmers could send their cattle out to graze during the summer. As W.L. Morton has noted, in Red River cottage and byre had risen by the river side and the little 'parks' on the banks, cropped year after year, recalled the infields of the old land. The back portion of the two-mile-deep lot was pastured as the outfield was; ... And a further two miles behind each lot had become the 'hay privilege' of the owner of the lot, with all possessing right of common to hay and pasturage on the outer plain.35

A variation on this pattern were 'park lots' located in the outer two miles of unoccupied lots. These consisted of choice pieces of prairie land on which the settler would break and cultivate a few acres. Often the claimant would also build a cabin on the lot and live on it in the summer, taking his calves and cows out for better pasturage. There were many of these

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

35

park lots in St Andrew's, varying from 2 to 100 acres. If left uncultivated for a number of years, these lots were sometimes claimed by others. Usually an absence of three to four years was enough for the lot to be considered abandoned. Others in the settlement claimed that the period was seven to eight years, and still others claimed that ceasing to cultivate or occupy these park lots did not invalidate the claim. This resulted in many disputes between claimants, but there had been no judicial decision on the question before 1870.% THE METIS ECONOMY

Although the Metis supplemented the produce of their buffalo hunts and river-lot farms with seasonal labour for the Hudson's Bay Company, duck hunting, and fishing in Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, farming and buffalo hunting remained their economic focus until the 1840s. The settlers first harvested good crops in 1824,37 but it was not until 1827-the year after a disastrous flood-that agriculture became established in the colony. Between 1827 and 1835, a succession of good crops stabilized the colony's economy. This was evident in the construction, by 1830, of 204 new houses, barns, and enclosures.38 Land under cultivation rose from 2,152 acres in 1831 to more than 3,500 acres in 1835.39 Establishing farms on the banks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers was, according to one observer, much less difficult than in many other places. Father Lafleche, a Roman Catholic missionary stationed at St Francois Xavier in the 1840s, observed that at most locations in the settlement, all that was necessary to put a plough into the ground was to clear or burn off some brush. In many places, it was only necessary to erect an enclosure around a field and plough it.40 The necessity of enclosing all cultivated fields to protect the crops from cattle roaming at large, and the increasing scarcity of wood needed to build these enclosures, kept fields small. Five acres was considered a large plot in Red River. Cultivated plots were also kept small by the level of farm technology and the absence of a market for surplus production. Before 1850, broadcast sowing on roughly ploughed and harrowed land was the usual method of planting, while harvesting was carried out with a sickle. The marshy state of the back land, and the inability of the iron-tipped wooden plough to cut through the heavy soil and grass growth of the meadow lands, tied cultivation and settlement to the loamy silt soils of well-drained river lots.41 While most scholars agree that agriculture and the hunt were supplementary to each other in Red River, recourse is occasionally made to the 'attraction of the hunt' as a way of explaining the varying degrees of com-

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mitment to agriculture among the Metis. In most such accounts, the French Metis are identified as buffalo hunters, while the English Metis are portrayed as serious farmers.42 The censuses of Red River from the mid to late 1840s are the basis of this interpretation. Typically, these scholars ignore earlier census data and thus miss the crucial economic transition that occurred in the 1840s. It is clear from census figures that by 1835 small-scale peasant agriculture was customary in most Red River parishes. There appears to have been little difference in cultivated acreage among the various communities in the settlement. Most families cultivated five to six acres, which works out to about one acre per person. In the parishes of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's, the number of cultivated acres per family and individual were almost identical. The number of larger farms in the two parishes is also very similar, with twenty-two families (23 per cent of the parish's families) cultivating ten or more acres in St Andrew's, and twenty-six families (27 per cent of the parish's families) in St Francois Xavier. Within both St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's there was a discrepancy in cultivation between families headed by Europeans and those families headed by Metis. While most family members (wives and children) were Metis, families headed by European males generally cultivated about twice as much as TABLE 1 Population and Cultivation in Red River, 1835

Total population N o . o f single No. of families Average family size % Metis (family heads) Cultivated acreage Cult, acreage per family Cult, acreage per person No. cultivating more than 10 acres Cult, acreage per Metis fam. head Cult, acreage per Eur. fam. head

St Andrew's

St Frangois Xavier

Red River

547(15%)* 3 94(14.3%) 5.79 53.6 566(16.2%) 6.02 1.03 22 4.04 7.93

506(13.8%) 5 97(14.7%) 5.16 74.5 594(17%) 6.12 1.17 26 4.62 9.34

3,646 658 5.55 3,504 5.33 0.96

Source: Census of Red River. While the 1835 census did not break down the population by parish, this was accomplished by using parish registers, the HBC land register, and other censuses. * In parentheses: the percentage of the total for the entire settlement

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

37

families headed by Metis males. One explanation for this was that European heads of family were usually older, had larger families, and hence more sons at home to help farm. The staple crop of the colony by the 1850s was an early maturing spring wheat,43 which produced high yields. According to H.Y. Hind, the University of Toronto geologist hired by the government of Canada to explore the Northwest during 1857-8, yields of forty bushels per acre were common on new ground in the Red River Settlement.44 Father Lafleche noted that wheat fields were the height of a man, and that a farmer harvested about twenty-two bushels of wheat for every one sown.45 Harvest season began in late August and ran into September. Cut with a sickle, the wheat was gathered into sheaves and then assembled into 'shocks' by the women and children, who followed behind the men. The sheaves were carted from the field to the farmyard and stacked, to be threshed in winter when more time was available. The grain was threshed by flailing the wheat stalks on the floor in the barn. It was then winnowed from the chaff by the cross draught of the two-doored barn. The threshing season lasted throughout the winter, grain being threshed as it was needed for food or sale.46 Because of the absence of any external market, most of this wheat was ground into flour for colony consumption at one of the thirteen wind- and watermills in the settlement in the 1830s.47 Other crops included barley, oats, corn, potatoes, and turnips, but there was little use for them other than as animal feed. Some barley was malted for home brewing of beer, but all attempts to establish a distillery failed.48 Wheat and other grain production remained at subsistence levels until the 1870s. In 1849 there were still only 6,392 acres under cultivation in the colony-less than 1.2 acres per person. In St Andrew's, one of the more agricultural parishes after 1849, the average cultivation per person remained under 1.3 acres per person until 1870. After 1822-3, cattle and pigs were introduced to the settlement. But before 1827, livestock husbandry met with limited success as the severity of winters and attacks by wolves reduced returns. Even more serious was the lack of winter fodder, which arose because the settlers had little experience in haying in the 1820s.49 As settlers gained experience in harvesting hay from the plains, livestock became increasingly important in the subsistence economy of Red River.50 For winter fodder, each farmer could count on the yield of his lot and the two-mile hay privilege. This he mowed when he thought fit and his other work allowed. If he required more hay, he had recourse to the plains. Competition for the hay of the wild land behind the hay privilege became so intense that the Council of Assiniboia

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regulated the cutting of hay on the plains. Livestock provided motive power and meat for household consumption. Some cattle were exported to the United States in the period after 1830, but this was never an important economic factor. By 1835 most settlers had a horse for riding and pulling the ubiquitous Red River cart, a pair of oxen for ploughing,51 and some cattle and pigs for meat. The larger number of cattle and pigs in St Andrew's, in comparison to St Francois Xavier, stemmed from the greater reliance of the St Frangois Xavier Metis on buffalo for meat (see table2). The biannual buffalo hunt provided a great deal of the colony's provisions. Contrary to W.L. Morton's position that agriculture and the hunt acted as fatal checks on each other, with one depressing the price of the other's produce,52 subsistence agriculture and the buffalo hunt were more complementary than competitive. Whenever the hunt failed, the produce of the farm helped provide the needs of the Metis hunters, and vice-versa. Census returns also indicate that most Metis in the various parishes had some cultivated land in the 1830s, dispelling the notion that the hunting and farming economies originated in different sections of the population. The 1835 census shows, for example, that 80 of the 94 families (85.1 per cent) in the parish of St Andrew's cultivated at least one acre, and that in St Francois Xavier 76 of 97 families (78.35 per cent) cultivated at least one acre. In the 1820s, organized buffalo hunts began to replace the more individualized hunting out of the Red River Settlement.53 Prior to this, the TABLE 2 Livestock Production in Red River, 1835

Total livestock Average per family Total horses Average per family Total cattle* Average per family Total pigs Average per family

St Andrew's

St Frangois Xavier

Red River

1,223(16%)* 12.87 87(12.1%) 0.93 824(16.9%) 8.76 312(15.4%) 3.28

884(11.6%) 8.93 131(18.2%) 1.35 555(11.4%) 5.72 198(9.7%) 2.0

7,617 11.6 718 1.1 4,874 7.40 2,025 3.07

Source: Red River census of 1835 * In parentheses: the percentage of the total for the entire settlement t Includes oxen and calves

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buffalo were found so close to the settlement that individuals and small groups could secure their food supply without leaving the colony. As the settlement's population increased and the level of hunting intensified, the buffalo herds roamed farther from Red River, obliging hunters to go out in groups or bands. In part, this was a result of the necessity of making a common approach to the herds, but it also arose because the largest herds were found southwest of the settlement in hostile Sioux territory. By the late 1820s, two separate hunts originated in Red River. The first and largest hunt left the settlement in early June and returned in late July or August. The proceeds of this hunt, largely dried meat and pemmican, were usually traded to the Hudson's Bay Company for clothing and other supplies.54 For this reason, the summer hunt was also known as the 'dried meat hunt.' The second and smaller hunt left the settlement in September, with the hunters returning after the first cold spell in late October or early November. This hunt was smaller (about one-third the size of the summer hunt) because many Red River Metis who could not afford to winter in the settlement had by then left for their wintering camps, where they subsisted by hunting deer and moose.5S The size of the fall hunt was also affected by the fact that it occurred during harvest and haying, which were important to the welfare of many families. This hunt produced some dried meat and pemmican, but the colder weather permitted the Metis to return with large quantities of frozen meat as well. As such, the fall hunt was commonly referred to as the 'green meat hunt.' Meat from this hunt was used mainly to feed the Metis families through the winter. The hunt also provided the Metis with most of the thick buffalo robes they used as blankets before the 1850s. As the population of the settlement increased, the size of the summer hunts increased. The first hunts in the 1820s comprised 500 to 600 carts; by the mid-1830s this had increased to nearly 1,000; and by 1840 more than 1,200 carts accompanied the summer hunt. Whole families went with the hunters, as the Metis women were crucial in the production of pemmican and dried meat, and in the curing of the buffalo robes and skins. Alexander Ross, who accompanied the 1840 hunt that originated at Pembina, noted that in addition to the 620 hunters, there were 650 women and 360 children in the caravan.56 The summer hunt attracted both the English and French Metis. During June and July, the Red River Settlement was almost deserted. The only remaining residents were the elderly, very young children, and the Scottish settlers of Kildonan.57 The extent to which the hunt was complementary to the agricultural economy in Red River is attested to by William Cockran, the Anglican missionary

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at St Andrew's. An avowed opponent of the hunt because he thought its nomadic character uncivilized, Cockran himself sent a cart along in 1837 to gather provisions for his Indian school as there was no prospect of reaping a grain crop that year.58 The buffalo hunt out of Red River comprised three different parties. One was the Pembina Metis who had not moved to St Francois Xavier in the 1820s. Pembina was not only the rendezvous where all three parties met in council before heading out onto the plains, it was also the home of Jean Baptiste Wilkie, a famous hunt chief of the late 1830s and 1840s. The second group was the 'main river party,' which consisted of those Metis who lived along the Red River northward from St Boniface. The third group was the Metis hunters of St Francois Xavier. By the 1850s, the size of the hunt had increased to such an extent that the St Francois Xavier hunters formed a separate expedition. They did, however, remain in contact with the main group because they feared Sioux hostilities.59 The three parties normally met at Pembina in early June to choose leaders and set rules for the hunt. These rules included prohibitions on running the buffalo before the general order was given, or going off alone to hunt or lagging behind the main party-rules that protected the interests of the whole group. Ten captains were chosen by lot to enforce these rules and to protect the caravan on the march. Each captain, in turn, had ten soldiers under his command, who acted as the police force. The senior captain was considered the chief of the hunt and he, along with the other captains, formed the council of the hunt. In the 1820s, Cuthbert Grant was usually the chief of the hunt. In the 1830s and 1840s, prominent chiefs included Jean Baptiste Wilkie from Pembina and William Hallet from the 'main river' group. Besides being captains, such men were regarded as great chiefs or heads of the camp. The chief was the final arbiter of disputes while on the march; his decisions were not questioned. Ten or twelve men were also selected to guide the camp and choose the direction the march would take. These guides were usually hunters of experience, as it was not easy to avoid marshes, go around lakes, or find a path between precipitous hills. Each guide led the hunt for a day at a time. The guide for the day was responsible for hoisting the camp flag in the morning as a signal for the march to begin and for lowering the flag as the signal for a new camp to be struck. While the flag was raised, the guide was understood to be the chief of the expedition. All captains were then subject to him, and the soldiers served as his messengers. When the flag was lowered and camp struck, however, authority reverted to the captains of the hunt.80

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

41

The Metis would leave their rendezvous site for the buffalo plains in a controlled and orderly manner because at any time the expedition might encounter hostile Sioux or a herd of buffalo. Typically, the march began at daybreak, and the cart brigade proceeded in two to four columns depending on the number of carts. The line of march was often five or six miles long. At the head of the column rode the guide of the day, carrying the flag and giving direction to the moving camp. Four groups of mounted scouts and soldiers protected the caravan. They formed advance and rear guards and protected both flanks. Any intelligence they gathered about Sioux or buffalo herds was relayed to the guide of the day. When the first alarm was sounded, the carts immediately formed into two columns and the whole formation wheeled, joining the extremities of the columns and forming a circle. Wheel to wheel, the carts formed a corral for the horses and oxen. This prevented stampedes. If no hostile Sioux or buffalo were encountered, the march would not break off for lunch until two in the afternoon. It then resumed until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. By that time, the expedition would have travelled about twenty miles. When camp was struck for the night, a council of all the leading men would be held to discuss the day's activities and to decide the line of march for the next day. If the scouts spotted a buffalo herd, they signalled the guide and a camp was immediately struck. Once camped, the hunters mounted their fastest horses and awaited the orders of the chief. Normally, they approached the herd slowly upwind as short-sighted buffalo have an excellent sense of smell. They advanced at an easy canter in a long line with the hunt chief leading the way. Anyone who passed the chief faced a heavy fine. When within 400-500 yards of the buffalo, they broke into an easy gallop, keeping a long unbroken line. When the herd noticed the hunters, usually at a distance of a few hundred yards, it usually wheeled about and galloped off. The chief then gave the 'advance' signal and it became every man for himself. The hunters would ride into the herd with their mouths full of shot and their pockets full of powder. A hunter with a good horse often got to within three or four yards of the buffalo before firing. His trained buffalo runner, as the horses were known, would leap to the side to avoid stumbling over the falling animal. The Metis would immediately reload by pouring a handful of powder down the gun barrel, spitting a ball into the muzzle, and striking the gun-stock on his saddle to set the bullet. By this time, his horse would have brought him alongside another buffalo. Bringing his gun down across his saddle, he would fire from the waist. An experienced hunter with a fast horse could kill ten to twelve

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animals in a run, while a hunter with a less adept horse might kill only two or three. Much depended on the roughness of the terrain. Within an hour or two, the hunt would be over.61 While brief, the hunt was very dangerous. Scratched faces, sprains, contusions, dislocated shoulders, and broken legs and arms were common injuries as the ground was often rough and hilly and honeycombed with badger and fox holes. Men were killed during most hunts. In 1860, for example, Alexander Swain was one of the fatalities. While reloading his firearm, Swain put his mouth over the muzzle to spit a ball down the barrel. The hot barrel ignited the powder and the gun discharged in his mouth. While he survived the explosion and fall from his horse, his severely burned throat prevented him from eating and drinking and he died within two days.62 When the chase was over, the hunters immediately dismounted and began skinning and butchering the animals. The Metis were renowned for being able to identify their individual kills. Soon the women of the camp brought the carts to the place of the kill. They helped with the butchering and loaded the meat into the carts so that it could be hauled back to camp. Once in camp, the women assumed responsibility for the preparation and preservation of the meat. They would cut the meat into thin strips, which they dried over a fire for two or three days. The best of this dried meat would be folded up and tied into sixty- or seventy-pound bales. They made the rest pemmican, a nutritious form of buffalo meat that would keep for several years. In 1845 Father Belcourt, a Catholic missionary from Red River, wrote an eye-witness account of the making of pemmican: This meat, having previously been exposed to strong heat upon a drying frame of green wood, has become brittle and easy to reduce to powder. The fat of the interior, having been cut up and melted in large cauldrons of sheet iron, is poured out upon the threshed meat which is stirred up with spades until all the parts are well saturated; then this mixture is poured in skin sacks from which they have not even taken the trouble to remove the hair. The sacks so filled are called bulls (taureaux) or pimikenhigen (pemmican). If the fat that has been used is fat of the udder, they are called fine bulls (taureaux fins). Some mix with them dried fruits such as plums, or cherries; then they are called bulls with grains (taureaux a graines). The gastronomic experts esteem the first kind as good, the second better, and the third very good."3 These methods of curing the buffalo meat not only preserved it for later consumption but considerably reduced its volume. An entire buffalo

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

43

Mt-tis hunters' ramp, circa 1874

yielded just hall a sack of pemmican or three-quarters of a bale of dried meat. Once the meat had been processed, the march resumed. This pattern of activity was repeated until the carts were filled. It has been estimated that one cart-load comprised the dried meat, pemmican, and hides of eight to ten buffalo. In the 1830s, the other main occupation of the Red River Metis was as hired labour, or 'tripmen,' on Hudson's Bay Company boats. This job was an integral part of the HBC transportation system. When the company moved inland from its coastal factories in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, its chief form of transportation was a York boat that developed out of the traditional Orkney fishing craft. On the western rivers, the York boat could carry more than twice the load of the Nor'Westers' canoes with the same number of crew. York boats required crews of youthful 'tripmen,' who were capable of managing the large craft around rapids and on lakes. To man their boats, the company turned to the native sons of servants and officers. With the formation of the Red River Settlement and the move of the Hudson's Bay Company's administrative and distribution centre from York Factory to Fort Garry, the company increasingly recruited tripmen from the Metis of the colony. Each York boat was usually manned by nine men and carried three to four tons of freight. Tripmen fell into three categories: steersman, bowsman, and middlemen or rowers. The main duty of the steersman-the best paid of the tripmenwas to steer the boat, an ability that involved a thorough knowledge of dangerous water along the entire route. He would also lift the bales of goods or furs from the boat and place them on the backs of the carriers

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at the portages. The bowsman, in addition to the rowing and carrying he had to do, would stand in the bow of the boat at the rapids or shoals and signal the steersman about the nature of the course ahead. Using a long pole, he also helped keep the boat on course and away from rocks. The dudes of the middlemen included rowing, 'tracking' or dragging the boats with ropes around rapids on the upstream journey, and carrying the goods across portages. Later, in the 1850s and 1860s, when the Hudson's Bay Company replaced many of their York boat brigades with overland cart transport, the term 'tripman' also came to refer to those men who hired themselves out to man these cart brigades. In the 1830s, the company hired about 260 tripmen yearly to work the York boats. By the late 1850s and early 1860s, the Hudson's Bay Company and private traders hired fully a thousand tripmen annually to work on boats or cart brigades.64 By the 1830s, the Red River Metis worked on two main boat routes. The York brigades plied the route between Fort Garry on the Red and York Factory on Hudson Bay. Brigades made up of four to eight boats passed and repassed each other during the season of open water. With a round trip taking about sixty days, a tripman made two trips per season. The York trip, however, was less significant than the Portage La Loche brigades, which were responsible for carrying the yearly supplies to HBC posts in the Northwest. By the 1830s, this brigade numbered seventeen or eighteen boats. It left Fort Garry in three divisions, staggered at one-week intervals to avoid crowding or confusion at portages and camping places. Wages for the Portage la Loche tripmen were more than double those of the York brigades, but only one trip could be made per season and the work was harder. Given these conditions, most Metis preferred working on the York brigades. It was usually difficult to sign up enough tripmen to fill the complement needed for the Portage brigade. The Portage brigades left Red River with dried meat, pemmican, and farm produce as soon as ice left Lake Winnipeg. At Norway House on Lake Winnipeg, they exchanged their cargo of food for European trade goods brought down from York Factory during the previous season. They then proceeded westward across the lake and up the Saskatchewan River. Reaching Ile-a-la-Crosse and Portage la Loche by August, the tripmen carried their cargo half-way across the twelve-mile portage, where they exchanged their European goods for cargoes of furs brought down from the Mackenzie River and Athabasca districts. They then retraced their route to Norway House, collected any furs left there, and proceeded to York Factory, usually reaching the bayside post in early September. After resting

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

Wigwam, an Ojibwa Metis. His dress is typical of the Red River Metis.

45

46

Homeland to Hinterland

and celebrating for a week to ten days, they started back for Norway House laden with English trade goods that had been shipped to York Factory by the Hudson's Bay Company's annual boat from England. They left these goods at Norway House for the next year's brigades and returned to Red River by mid-October. As the tripping season lasted from May to October, few tripmen farmed. One historian has pointed out that the hardships, slavish work, and the thrilling experiences common to these trips coloured a tripman's life for the rest of the year: 'Once or twice repeated, it left him a tripman and nothing else. The nature of the work unfitted him for the more prosaic walks of life, even if he had any inclination for them, which was not often.'65 At the end of the season, some tripmen left the settlement to winter on the plains, where they hunted buffalo, but most idly spent the cold season among friends. In this way, the proceeds of the season's work were quickly spent, and by December they were ready to re-engage for the next year. In general, about half the wages were paid out in instalments before the trip started. Once caught in this economic cycle, many Metis remained tripmen for their entire working lives. THE SOCIAL AND SEASONAL R O U N D

The social life of the Red River Metis revolved around settlement-wide gatherings during the summer buffalo hunt, the winter festive season, and the more mundane activities of visiting and gossiping. Like peasants everywhere, the Metis looked forward to those times when food and drink were plentiful and they could forget the hard labour of the farm, the hunt, and the freighting trip. Weddings, feasts, horse racing, and dancing were in a real sense what men and women, whether old or young, lived for. Bishop Tache noted with a disapproving tone that 'the most striking fault of the Half-breeds appears to me to be the ease with they resign themselves to the allurements of pleasure. Of lively disposition, ardent and playful, gratification is a necessity to them, and if a source of pleasure presents itself they sacrifice everything for its enjoyment.'66 The winter festive season was the highlight of the year. It lasted from the week before Christmas until a week after New Year's. The isolation of the Northwest made Red River the place to be at Christmas, and many Metis travelled hundreds of miles to be there then. This was the best time for social intercourse of all kinds, and, as Margaret Arnett MacLeod has noted, 'not a man in the settlement however poor or idle, but possessed

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

47

some kind of horse or pony, and at this season the whole settlement vied with each other in gay carioles (sleighs), bright embroidered saddle-cloths and harness, and fine or gaudy clothes.'67 In the week before Christmas, sleigh bells rang continually up and down the frozen Red and Assiniboine Rivers, which served as winter roads, as the Metis made the round of houses throughout the settlement. No one felt a need to extend invitations, except to the most exclusive balls, and houses and kitchens were open to all. There was always a pot of tea brewing, and often the fiddling and dancing continued till dawn. On Christmas Eve, many Catholic Metis attended midnight Mass in the Cathedral of St Boniface, while Protestants held their Christmas service on the morning of the twenty-fifth. A large Christmas dinner, consisting of various combinations of roast beef, whitefish, buffalo meat, and mutton, was considered essential. Particular delicacies included boiled buffalo hump, dried moose nose, and smoked or salted buffalo tongue; the better off also served plum or Christmas pudding.68

Metis dance at Devils Lake, Dakota Territory

48

Homeland to Hinterland

New Year's was another high point of the season. While the blue bloods of the settlement gathered at Fort Garry for a revel and dance, the majority of the Metis gathered in private homes for dancing and merrymaking of their own on New Year's Eve. The next day was considered 'kissing day.' From early morning until dusk, the men travelled from house to house in their best capotes, sashes, and hats to receive a New Year's kiss from the women and girls of the settlement. After the obligatory kiss, they received the best food and spirits the house had to offer. Women who did not comply with this ritual were considered 'stuck up.' Another practice, often followed by the French Metis, was to visit the parental home on New Year's Day to receive their father's blessing. Invariably this was followed with a breakfast of New Year's 'tortiere' (meat pie). During the day, it was also common to hold horse races on the Red River adjacent to Fort Garry. A course was laid out on the ice, and, regardless of the temperature, spectators lined the banks to watch. Many Red River couples also took advantage of the winter to marry, as this was a season of abundance among family and friends with time on their hands. Both were essential for the week-long celebration that marked Red River weddings.69 Following the winter festive season, life in Red River returned to a more prosaic and relaxed pace. Some residents, like Peter Garrioch, went out onto the plains with a few friends to restore his supply of fresh meat. In the 1830s and 1840s, buffalo still wintered within a few days' travel of the settlement.70 Others trapped in the north, or cleaned and ground their wheat for home consumption. But hauling wood was the most common activity for the remainder of the winter. While some Metis had woodlots adjacent to their river lots, most Red River residents had to travel far for firewood and building and fencing materials. If it was to burn properly, wood had to be dried for at least two summers.71 Much wood was needed. In 1827 William Cockran noted that to heat his house on a cold day he burnt a cord of wood (a stack of wood 2.44 metres long, 1.22 metres high, and .91 metres broad).72 In February of 1849, Rev. Smithurst employed twenty persons to cut the wood he needed for his Indian school at St Peter's.73 Wood could be cut at any time of the year, but it was easiest to haul in winter. Favoured woodlots included those in the vicinity of Portage la Prairie, 'the Pines' (a tract of coniferous forest northeast of Winnipeg near what today is Bird's Hill Park), 'the Far Pines' (near the present-day town of Selkirk), and 'Davie's Pines' (a tract of coniferous forest where cedar could be found located south of Beausejour some 56 kilometres east of Winnipeg) ,74 As the woodlots along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers became exhausted in the 1850s and 1860s, such excursions became even more frequent.

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

49

With spring came the duck and goose hunts on Lake Manitoba and Shoal Lake (April and May) and preparations for spring seeding. Land newly converted to cropland had to be fenced and ploughed. Seeding usually began in May. By the end of May, the HBC boats manned by Metis tripmen began leaving for York Factory and Portage La Loche. Depending on when the ice left Lake Winnipeg, these brigades departed between May 30 and June 10. Early June was also the time when the Metis began leaving the settlement to rendezvous at Pembina for the large summer buffalo hunt. They would not be back until late July. Most Metis families participated in the buffalo hunt, but usually left behind some older men and women along with the younger children to take care of the crops and farm animals. Those who remained in the settlement during the hunt initiated haying. While hay could be cut at any time on one's own river lot, this source seldom produced enough to feed more than a few animals through the winter. Most Red River residents had to go to the plains to cut additional hay. To manage the competition for the best hay lands, no cutting outside the river lots was allowed before July 20. This deadline also allowed those Metis returning from the summer hunt to take part. These hunters also returned in time to harvest the other crops of the settlement. Harvesting was usually complete before a smaller contingent of Metis hunters left for the second 'green meat' hunt, which lasted from mid-September to November. Those who stayed in the settlement during this second hunt harvested any remaining crops and took part in the autumn goose hunt. In late November, with both hunters and tripmen back in the settlement, the Metis began hauling their hay in from the plains and began to cut and haul firewood. In November, the fall fisheries on Lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg also commenced. While the whitefish fishery customarily engaged few Metis, it did attract more attention whenever the hunt and farming produced less than expected.75 Typically, the Metis living in the parishes along the Red River fished along the shores of Lake Winnipeg near Grand Marais, while those along the Assiniboine River fished at Oak Point on Lake Manitoba. They netted whitefish and hung them head down to dry. This technique kept them from spoiling before freeze-up. When snow and freezing temperatures did arrive, the Metis took their ox-drawn sledges to their caches and hauled frozen fish back to the settlement. This job was usually completed prior to the Christmas season.76 On the third Thursday in the months of February, May, August, and November, the colony's General Court provided a diversion as it tried cases that sometimes involved murder, abortion, and assault. More often, it dealt

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with liquor offences, unpaid debts, smuggling, and other petty crimes.77 These proceedings, eagerly followed by all settlers, provided the grist for the colony's gossip mills. In the 1830s, Red River represented an amalgam of small, largely Metis communities of varying ethnic and religious orientations. Daily social life in these communities turned almost exclusively on the parish and the neighbourhood: children grew up, went to school, courted, and married within the same parish. This notwithstanding, the Metis of all communities structured their lives according to a common economic pattern derived from a peasant subsistence economy based on river-front agriculture, the plains hunt, and tripping. While they lived in separate areas of the settlement during the rest of the year, and largely married within their own community, for a few months each year members of most communities lived in relative harmony while on the buffalo hunt. Thus, although the Red River parishes were unquestionably distinct entities, the English and French Metis followed a similar way of life throughout the 1830s. As late as 1845, in fact, Father Lafleche of St Francois Xavier noted that the colony was made up of French-Catholic and English-Protestant Metis sections, and that 'les deux sections de la population vivent en parfait union.'78 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND CONFLICT

In establishing the various parishes and settlements that made up the Red River Colony, both the Hudson's Bay Company and the churches attempted to recreate the social orders of the trading post and the European rural parish. The Anglican and Catholic clergy shared with the Hudson's Bay Company a common vision of the structure of Red River society in which the clergy, as well as the retired and active commissioned gentlemen of the company, formed the ruling elite in the colony. At the top of this hierarchical social structure, defined by social standing and by material wealth, were the colony's 'principal settlers.' This small group consisted largely of British and a few Canadian-born officers of the former North-West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company who had retired with their Metis families to the Red River Settlement. They possessed not only the wealth but the habits (and, in some cases, the education) that qualified them to lead the settlement. As such, they were the social equals of senior officers in the Hudson's Bay Company service. In the English-speaking part of the settlement, these families included the Birds, Logans, Sutherlands, and Gunns.79 Among the French-speaking set-

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

51

tiers of St Francois Xavier, the principal settlers included the families of Angus McGillis, Cuthbert Grant, Pierre Falcon, and Alexander Breland. It is interesting to note that, among them, only Angus McGillis was Canadian-born. The others had been born in the settlement or in the Northwest, and headed second-generation Metis families. This pattern, unlike the one at St Andrew's, where most principal settlers were British-born, was a result of the tendency of Canadian-born officers of the fur trade to retire to Canada. Their Metis heritage reduced their standing with the company's officers and the British-born of the settlement. Cuthbert Grant represented this squirearchy in St Francois Xavier, where his double river lot was the centre of the parish. In 1824 George Simpson had appointed Grant 'Warden of the Plains' to reward him for his role in settling the Pembina Metis in British territory. Not merely honorific, the title came with a salary of £200 a year, for which Grant was to act as representative of the Hudson's Bay Company. The Hudson's Bay Company was adamant about preventing the Metis from trading with anyone else; they were especially afraid that the Metis would set up their own posts in the west and take furs to American traders on the Missouri. Grant himself was allowed to trade, but in exchange he was expected to prevent his countrymen from doing the same. As chief of the plains Metis, Grant fulfilled this role effectively until the late 1840s. By 1835 he, along with his wife, Marie McGillis, and their six children, cultivated 20 acres and owned 24 cattle, 6 horses, and 10 carts, denoting Grant's dual involvement in agriculture and the hunt. 80 James Sutherland, who occupied lots 96 and 97, was one of St Andrew's principal settlers. Originally from Ronaldshay in the Orkney Islands, Sutherland joined,the Hudson's Bay Company in 1797 and was stationed at Cumberland House. From 1821 to 1827, when he retired to Red River with his family of seven children, he was chief factor in charge of Swan River District. He was married to Jane Flett, a native woman with whom he lived for many years. In 1835 Sutherland cultivated 25 acres, owned 18 cattle, 5 horses, and 3 carts, and lived in fine fashion.81 Like other principal settlers, Sutherland was able to afford the accoutrements of life which constituted the 'correct' way. According to Sutherland, the Red River elite had 'introduced a system of extravagance in the place which is followed by all that can afford it, and to keep up in a little respectability have followed it in a small way.'82 Sutherland noted that his own household expenses had doubled since he arrived in Red River. The clergy, both Protestant and Catholic, were also part of the colony elite. Their social and spiritual leadership, along with their mutually sup-

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portive relationship with the Hudson's Bay Company, ensured this. There were, however, some important distinctions between the Protestant and Catholic clerics. The Catholic clergy, because of their religion, language, and Quebec origins, were somewhat more distant from the political leadership of the colony, which remained British-oriented and English-speaking. As a result, they were initially unaffected by the pursuit of status at Upper Fort Garry. The Anglican clergy, by contrast, had much greater pretensions to social leadership in the settlement. They regarded themselves as morally and racially superior to the Metis and the Indian, and considered it their duty to instil the values of civilization and Christianity among the native population. As Frits Pannekoek has pointed out, these beliefs and self-aggrandizement created social conflict among the Protestant elite 'since the fur trade officers were by no means willing to consider the clergy their equals, or their mixed-blood wives and children inferior.'83 Beneath the rank of principal settler and clergy was a small group consisting of private merchants and lay officials of the church (such as school teachers and catechists). This included a wide spectrum of individuals such as retired Hudson's Bay Company servants of senior rank and the Metis sons of retired officers who did not possess the same prestige as the principal settlers.84 Below this were most of the Metis who worked small holdings, laboured on the boats, and hunted the buffalo. This society offered little upward mobility. Between 1821 and 1826, the salaried workforce of the Hudson's Bay Company declined by 1,233 men, a reduction of 65 per cent that left little room for advancement. While Metis could and did become postmasters in the service of the company, few were promoted beyond this position. Whereas eighteenth-century Hudson's Bay Company apprentices and labourers could aspire to high position with some confidence, by the 1840s it was unheard of for any servant, white or native-born, to become a 'gentleman.'85 James Sutherland was at a loss to ensure the social standing of his Metis children: I have now four sons at the house with me, the two oldest are now men fit for any duty in this part of the world [but] their [sic] is no opportunity for young people to push themselves forward in any way, better than labourers, either as farmers or Boatmen in the Cos service and either way they can barely make a living - my two youngest sons has got a better Education than I had when I came to this country yet it will be of no use to them ...8" The transition to a settled economy and a hierarchical social order that the majority of the Metis in the settlement had made by the 1830s was

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

53

painful for many.87 Having grown up near trading posts in the Northwest, most were not only ill-prepared to become farmers, but found the labour of clearing land for cultivation unpleasant. This, combined with increasingly rigid social divisions and years of scarcity, led to a number of upheavals in the 1820s and 1830s. These uprisings and their quick collapse reinforce the view of Red River as a peasant society. One of the first occurred during the winter and spring of 1825-6. The winter was very hard with deep snow. Buffalo ranged far from the colony, and cattle and horses found little fodder on the plains. By January of 1826, cattle were dying, the price of buffalo meat was exorbitant, and little grain was left. The destitute were forced to eat their dogs and horses.88 As the Metis knew the Hudson's Bay Company had hay and grain stored up, they began demanding aid. Aware that governments in other countries afforded relief to people in hard times, they felt the company was morally obligated to provide for them in a time of scarcity.89 The Hudson's Bay Company did step in and disperse food and grain to the settlers, but by April 1826 the company had only enough left for seed grain in spring. Famine soon enveloped the colony. The poorer segments of the population, believing the Hudson's Bay Company and richer settlers still had food and grain, roamed the settlement in mobs and forcibly seized food when they found some.90 This state of unrest grew worse as the cold weather continued. By April 8, the Hudson's Bay Company learned there were several conspiracies supported by the Metis, Canadiens, and De Meurons. These plots involved capturing and plundering Fort Garry and the colony's windmills, as well as robbing the richer Kildonan settlers. The only Metis who remained aloof were those under the influence of Cuthbert Grant at the White Horse Plain.91 With no police to protect their property, the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company tried to subvert these plots by a combination of conciliation and threat. To split up the conspirators, the officers promised seed grain to all Metis and Canadiens who remained peaceful. Donald Mackenzie, the officer in charge of Fort Garry, visited the Catholic priests at St Boniface and informed them of the threats to the company and the possible repercussions for the Catholic Church if an insurrection did break out. Bishop Provencher immediately understood Mackenzie's veiled threat and at High Mass exhorted the French Metis to refrain from further involvement. These actions left the De Meurons as the only committed insurrectionists, and they called off the planned attacks.92 Any plans of insurrection were decisively drowned out when warmer weather finally arrived at the end of April and the Red River overflowed its banks. By

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4 May 1826, the settlement was completely under water. When the flood waters receded, the disgruntled De Meurons and Swiss left the settlement for the United States and Canada. The lack of markets, the low prices paid for pemmican, and hardening social lines produced another uprising in the 1830s. The Hudson's Bay Company's increased use after 1821 of seasonal labour weakened the bonds linking officers with servants, while the company's new practice of selecting its officers largely from Highland Scots in Great Britain severed the ties between the Metis and the officers active in the company's service.93 Late in 1834, resentment escalated into an open rupture. Shortly before Christmas, a Metis tripman by the name of Antoine Larocque went to Upper Fort Garry, the administrative centre of the Hudson's Bay Company, to receive a second instalment of wages owed him for an upcoming trip.94 According to surviving accounts, the Hudson's Bay Company clerk used insulting language when addressing Larocque. The tripman returned the compliment. Thomas Simpson, the clerk in charge, became enraged at Larocque's insolence and struck him on the head with an iron poker. With blood streaming out of the wound, Larocque ran out of the fort to rouse other Metis to respond to this injustice. The entire Metis community in the settlement took up arms in Larocque's defence, demanding that if Simpson were not turned over to them for punishment they would demolish the fort.95 The English Metis might have remained aloof from this incident had they not also had standing grievances against the company and the social elite of the colony. They had been particularly insulted when, earlier in 1834, William Hallet, a Metis son of former officer, Henry Hallet, had been rejected as a suitor for the daughter of chief factor Allan McDonell in favour of the son of a Selkirk settler.96 While the girl preferred Hallet, her guardian, the governor of Assiniboia, preferred the Scottish lad. The governor sent for Hallet and reprimanded him for aspiring to the hand of a lady accustomed 'to the first society.' As Hallet was a leader of the English Metis, this insult became a rallying point among them. According to Alexander Ross, they decided that if this was the way the Metis were to be treated they would henceforth band together against the leaders of the colony.97 Thus, it was not surprising that when the French Metis approached them to join in their resistance following the Larocque incident, they readily joined the cause.98 Faced with a Metis mob insisting that Thomas Simpson be delivered up to them to be dealt with according to their law of retaliation, company officers immediately shut the gates of the fort and refused the demand.

Metis Economy and Society in the 1830s

55

This only inflamed the growing mob, who threatened to scalp the governor and drive all the whites out of country." In desperation, the governor of Assiniboia, Alexander Christie, turned to the Catholic clergy in hopes of pacifying the Metis. Father Belcourt was asked to talk with them. Belcourt, a favourite of the Metis, was able to sooth the assembled crowd. After hours of negotiation, he managed to convince them to disperse on the understanding that the governor would let Larocque draw his wages without performing his trip, and give the Metis a ten-gallon keg of rum and tobacco in proportion.100 In St Andrew's, Cockran threatened his parishioners with perdition if they did not desist.101 Although stability quickly returned to the settlement, the uprising acted as a catalyst for change to the local government. Some Metis may have realized that if they stood united, the company would have to gain at least their tacit assent in order to govern the colony. For its part, the Hudson's Bay Company realized that it must distance itself, at least be seen to distance itself, from the government of the colony. As a result, in 1835 it expanded the membership of the Council of Assiniboia, made it more representative, and created new judicial machinery. It created four judicial districts, each with an appointed magistrate or justice of the peace who heard cases of petty offences, and a general court, held at the governor's residence the last Thursday of every quarter, which presided over more important cases.102 To ensure the council also had some measure of authority, an armed police force of sixty officers and privates were proposed. This plan, however, was not put into practice. In 1835 Governor Simpson reported to the London governors of the Hudson's Bay Company that the settlement was more tranquil, and that the militia was no longer needed. 103 Government continued to rest on the consent of the Metis, who generally accepted the Council of Assiniboia. This did not imply, however, docile acceptance of the situation. In 1835, following the transfer of the colony from the heirs of Selkirk to the Hudson 's Bay Company, the Metis protested to the company about the cost of milling their wheat at the colony mills, and demanded more secure land titles, better prices for pemmican, and a market for their wheat. While Simpson and the company neither made concessions on land titles nor agreed to pay better prices for pemmican and wheat, they did agree to help construct a new mill among the French Metis settlers in the upper sections of the settlement. 104 Similarly, when the council and judiciary acted in a manner contrary to accepted traditional practices, resistance could result. One example of this occurred in 1836, when the first petty jury in the settlement was empanelled to hear the case of Louis St Denis,

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who was accused of theft. While his conviction was accepted by the Metis community, his sentence of flogging created such a feeling of indignation that the man who administered the flogging had to flee for his life.105 Thereafter, flogging was seldom used as a punishment. The general characteristics of these protests are in keeping with what could be termed peasant revolts: spontaneous, unorganized political action based on little ideology, often appearing as short outbursts of accumulated frustration and rebellious feeling, but easily suppressed. Like peasant revolts around the world, these movements of protest frequently centred upon the myth of a social order more just and egalitarian than that of the existing hierarchy. They entailed a cry for vengeance on the oppressor, a righting of individual wrongs, and a desire for putting some curb on the powers of the rulers.106 Social conflict mirrored the peasant economic organization and structure of the settlement. This relationship between economy and society can best be seen by examining the most basic building blocks of any society-its reproductive regime.

THRsdsd

The Red River Peasantry: The Demographic Regime

When you have said that [a human being] is born, lives for a certain time during which he reproduces himself, travels about and finally dies, you have defined essentially what demography is about. Everything in demography can be reduced to these essential happenings. 1

The political and economic contours of Metis life in Red River had their demographic counterparts. The family was the basic unit of residence and of pooling and distributing resources for consumption. The trends, changes, determinants, and consequences of family formation, fertility, mortality, and migration affected nearly all of the institutional and organizational systems of the Red River Metis communities. As such, a closer examination of these trends, along with economic and political events, reveals the basic patterns of Metis life in Red River in the 1830s and beyond. FAMILY FORMATION AND FERTILITY

Marriage in Red River Metis society, as in most societies, satisfied psychological, sexual, and social needs. Customarily involving a compromise between economic necessities, on the one hand, and biological and psychological pressures, on the other, the decision to marry also meant balancing short- and long-term costs that provided an incentive for having children. Within the economic and cultural constraints of Red River, marriage and a given fertility regime made sense. In the 1830s, the Metis parishes of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's conformed to the basic demographic patterns associated with a peasant economy.2 Metis households reproduced themselves from one generation

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to the next within fairly closed system. They were involved in a mixed subsistence economy, farming and hunting for their own use and for local barter, and selling the surplus more commonly to pay rent than to reap a profit. Because of the limited access to land and the costs of starting a new farmstead, Metis children reaching biological adulthood had to bide their time and rely on familial assistance prior to marriage. Other means of earning a living, sufficient to support one's own household without parental consent, were not very plentiful in Red River before the mid1840s. In this situation, parish endogamy prevailed, and most couples had no choice but to await the availability of a plot of land (including livestock and farm implements) before marrying. The limits of land availability, marriage, and inheritance customs determined the pace of new household formation. This was common in peasant societies. Young adults preferred waiting and securing independent households before marrying, rather than living with their parents. Characteristically, marriage occurred late in life and was not possible for everyone. In the Western European tradition, marriage usually took place at twenty-three years of age or later for both sexes, and approximately 10 per cent of the population never married.3 In these circumstances, fertility was regulated chiefly by delay of marriage. Women, on average, bore no children for the first twelve to fourteen years of their fertile life, or until their mid to late twenties. This 'nuptiality valve,' as it is sometimes called, eased or tightened in relation to the availability of land or alternative employment. When babies were conceived, it was usually so that the couple would have children to work the farm, to inherit the holding (males preferably), and to care for the parents in old age. There was, however, a limit on the number of children desired since all those who were not in line to inherit the land were an eventual drain (after their labour contribution ended) upon the family's chattel wealth, forcing a division of dowries and other forms of premortem inheritance. However, birth control being rudimentary and culturally discouraged or forbidden, couples found it difficult to stop reproduction in the mid to late thirties when their family reached what might be regarded as an ideal size. The spacing of births was easier to manage through abstinence and prolonged lactation. MARRIAGE

Because so little is known of the family and reproductive history of the Metis, some attempt must be made to sketch the qualitative aspects of this

The Demographic Regime

59

story. By the 1830s, the Red River Metis increasingly accepted church marriage as the culturally sanctioned means of starting a family. In 1831 Rev. William Cockran, recently relocated to what would become the Parish of St Andrew's, commented that 'there appears to be a growing respect among the population for the ordinance of matrimony. The youths are not now in the habit of going and living together until their banns are published, but they are legally married according to the form of our Church.' 4 He further noted that there were only two illegitimate births at the Rapids settlement that year.5 Indeed, illegitimate births were not common in either parish after 1834, when parish registers began to be kept.6 The ratios of illegitimate births to legitimate births in St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's were comparable to figures for parishes in Lower Canada in the early nineteenth century and were considerably lower than European figures (see table 3).7 For example, the Lower Canadian parish of Sorel experienced a ratio of 2.2 per cent illegitimate to legitimate births in the period 1800-39. By contrast, in both St Andrew's and St Frangois Xavier, the percentage of illegitimate births to legitimate births was 1 per cent or less for the decade of the 1830s, and never exceeded 3 per cent. The ratio of premarital conceptions (children born in the first seven months of marriage) 8 to all first births in the 1830s was also low in both parishes, both by Lower-Canadian and European standards.9 These low rates support the conclusion that after settlement in the Red River Colony, the Metis tended to confine sexual activity to marriage. This acceptance of church marriage as the means of starting a family can be seen in other areas as well. The high rates of marriage in St Andrew's and St Francois Xavier in the first years after the parishes were formed are an indication that many couples who were previously living together in the 'custom of the country' had chosen to formalize their relationship. The higher rate of marriage in St Andrew's, as compared to St Francois Xavier, probably occurred because the latter was an older setTABLE 3 Ratio of Illegitimate Births and Premarital Conceptions, 1834-9 % Illegitimate to legitimate births

% Premarital conceptions to all first births

St F. Xavier

St Andrew's

St F. Xavier

St Andrew's

1.0

0.7

4.35

0.0

Source: Provincial Archives of Manitoba, parish registers

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TABLE 4 Mean Marriage Rates, 1834-49 (marriages per 1,000 inhabitants) Period

St F. Xavier

St Andrew's

1834-9 1840-9

11.94 9.04

26.55 12.71

Source: Parish registers and Red River censuses

dement (priests had been serving the locality since the 1820s) and because St Andrew's experienced a much higher rate of immigration in the 1830s as retiring Hudson's Bay Company servants settled there with their Metis families. Having lived at various inland posts according to the custom of the country with their native wives, these Hudson's Bay Company servants now took the opportunity to solemnize their relationships. Reconstruction of some of these families using the census of 1870 and genealogical affidavits taken in the 1870s shows that many of the marriages in the period from 1834 to 1840 were those of couples with existing families. Little is known about the courtship practices of the Metis in the early decades of the nineteenth century, but the few surviving accounts from a later time period are reasonably consistent. Courtship rituals were short and sweet. The most extended description is that found in H.M. Robinson's Great Fur Land. Robinson spent some time in a Metis wintering camp in the 1860s and witnessed some of these practices. As there was litde opportunity for privacy in these camps, the Metis suitor would pay a visit to the home (single-room hut) of his sweetheart, whereupon he would be invited to dine regardless of the hour of the day. The men of the household and the prospective son-in-law would be served by the women. On finishing the meal, the young Metis couple would retire to a corner of the hut, where, in the presence of the rest of the family, they would whisper their endearments and exchange caresses. The expressions of endearment would take the form of pet names derived from animals regarded as particularly innocent and beautiful. Robinson noted the frequent use of the term 'muskox' and, when the suitor wanted to be more tender, 'muskrat.' By the blending of Indian and French languages, the woman became a beautiful wolverine. A commonplace love name was 'my litde pig.' After a short time, the female members of the family would participate in these discussions, and in this way the suitor was 'wafted into

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matrimony with a facility and dispatch.' When this short courtship was over, the prospective mother-in-law contributed to the certainty of the matrimonial venture by exhibiting the household wares that would accompany the bride upon her marriage. From then on, the couple was considered engaged.10 Several memoirs verify Robinson's account of courtship's brevity. In less that two hours, Peter Erasmus met and proposed to Charlotte Jackson. While he had known of her before and had been attracted to her for some time, they were virtual strangers when he proposed.11 Norbert Welsh's courtship of Cecilia Boyer in 1864 was similarly short: One day before the brigade started for Fort Garry, I took a little ride in my dog-sled around the settlement. On my way I met a girl, the daughter of a trader. She was walking. I looked at her and thought to myself, 'By Jove, that's what I'm looking for! You'll be my wife.' Well I knew where she lived, so that evening I walked to her house. She wasn't there. I was out of luck. I waited. After a while she came in. My heart began to beat fast. I was sitting on a stool. I asked her if she would come and sit beside me. She did. I asked her if she were engaged. She replied that she was not. I told her that I wanted her to tell me definitely whether she was or not. She answered that she was not engaged. Then I told her that I had been looking for her a long time, and asked her if she would consent to an engagement with me. She agreed. I told her that when we got to Fort Garry we would get married, that she must not break her promise.12

Two months after first speaking, they were married. Couples usually decided to marry when they were financially independent enough to set up a separate household. Although Peter Erasmus first proposed marriage to a Metis woman in 1856, he was turned down because she thought he did not have sufficient 'stability' to establish her ideal of a happy married life.13 Robinson noted that at the time of engagement it was customary for the suitor to make a present of a few horses or a quantity of provisions to the prospective father-in-law.14 The choice of marriage partners among the Metis seems, from accounts that survive, to have been left to the children rather than the parents. What mattered most was securing the consent and goodwill of those concerned. This was a departure from earlier fur trade practices when fur trade company fathers would often arrange their daughters' alliances to ensure that their adult daughters could continue in the way of life to which they had become accustomed. 15 Even in Red River, however, there was some ele-

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ment of parental veto. This was most notable among the 'principal settlers' of the colony. In 1834, when William Hallet asked for the hand of the daughter of the chief factor, Allan McDonell, his suit was rejected by her guardian, the governor of Assiniboia. As the governor told Hallet, he had no right aspiring to the hand of a lady accustomed to better society. This type of parental and social control, however, does not seem to have predominated among the Metis. When Hallet's suit was rejected, there was a general Metis protest to challenge the slight. Even 'mixed' marriages (between Protestant and Catholic) seem to have concerned the Metis little, although they were deplored by most of the clergy in the settlement. As early as 1824, Father Provencher was writing Bishop Plessis in Quebec for advice on this matter. In that instance, a Catholic Metis woman had been married to a Protestant Metis by Rev. Jones of the Church of England. Jones had not baptized the woman because she wished to remain a Catholic like her father. Since these types of marriages were becoming common,16 Provencher wanted to know if the Catholic Church considered such marriages valid. Later, in the 1840s, the Catholic Church felt it necessary to redo the work of Protestant ministers who had married Catholic Metis men to 'femmes infideles.'17 The Metis, however, do not seem to have been particularly bothered by these rulings. By the 1860s, the Metis of St Joseph, just across the U.S. boundary, were being married outside the church by government-appointed justices of the peace. According to the local priest, no one protested or felt any shame.18 While the only valid marriages in the Red River Settlement were religious weddings,19 the Metis seemed to have few scruples about changing church affiliation to get married. In the 1860s, the parish priest of St Francois Xavier noted that a 'good' number of Protestant Metis were being baptized to enable them to marry French-Catholic Metis women.20 It also worked the other way around. By the mid-1870s and 1880s, parents increasingly asked the parish priest of St Francois Xavier to allow their daughters to marry Protestants. In one case, Father Kavanagh admitted that the young woman would marry regardless of the church's ruling.21 When Peter Erasmus, a Protestant Metis, first considered marriage to a Catholic Metis woman from Lac Ste Anne, he noted that both the Anglican and Catholic Church in the West declared that such 'mixed marriages' could not possibly succeed. Erasmus had no problem ignoring this teaching and noted that the claim of the Catholic Church rested lightly on the girl's shoulders as well.22 The high degree of local or parish endogamy was more important than religious scruples in limiting the number of 'mixed marriages' in the Red

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River Settlement. In both St Andrew's and St Francois Xavier, 70-90 per cent of all marriages were between partners from the same parish. While no comparisons are available for parishes in Lower Canada, this endogamy rate within the two parishes at Red River was comparable to village endogamy in rural England. Studies of seven Lancashire and York villages show that as late as 1800 about two-thirds of all grooms chose brides from their village and about 90 per cent from within a ten-mile radius.23 Before 1850 most marriages took place in winter. This was the case in both parishes (see fig. 1). In St Francois Xavier, which comprised mainly Catholic Metis, January was the preferred month of marriage, followed closely by February. No marriages took place during the Advent season of December. By contrast, in St Andrew's, an Anglican Metis parish, FIGURE 1 St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's Marriages by Month, 1834-49

source: Parish register

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November and December were the preferred months of marriage, with December being more popular. As in other peasant societies, such as those in Lower Canada and Europe, winter was the time when agricultural tasks were not pressing and when fresh meat and other supplies were plentiful. 24 Thomas Bunn, writing to a friend in London about wedding practices in Red River, noted that Hudson's Bay Company stores were full at this time and much more could be purchased 'to carry on with greater Eclat.'25 Marriage was a turning point in the individual's life cycle-usually marking the transition from dependent minor to adult-and as such was the cause of a large celebration and ritual. Metis weddings, whether in English-Protestant or French-Catholic parishes, were joyous affairs lasting several days and involving much feasting, dancing, and drinking. Peter Garrioch, who attended a wedding in late November of 1846, later apologized for his behaviour: This is a day which I cannot soon forget; and the impression which the shameful occurrences of it have made on my mind will doubtless, and I hope, continue fresh in my memory until I cease to breathe. Charles Cook Jr. was married to-day to the late George Spence's daughter Margaret. About supper time -! The scene was too disgraceful to relate. Brothers &: brothers-in-law -! Great God, forgive us all our folly, and our deviation from the path of sobriety, chastity and charity, in what Thou hast commanded us always to walk.21'

When Cuthbert Grant's daughter married in St Francois Xavier in 1843, a guest noted that the dancing was already under way when he arrived at noon: We reached Mr. Grant's about 12 o'clock and found them all dancing; and Mr. G. himself, in that happy state, which is sometimes called glorious: we had something to eat, and then joined the dance ... We had danced all day and til 4 o'clock next morning-and by 9 the following day left them-heartily tired of the scene, but thinking the bridegroom a very happy fellow.27

Dancing, which was frowned upon by the Catholic priests, was allowed during a wedding. Wedding celebrations, which often lasted two to four days, usually began on a Tuesday since the church prohibited dancing on Fridays. After the wedding-night dance, a breakfast of meat was cooked and served with plum and rice puddings along with a two- or three-layer wed-

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ding cake made of sweet bannock (a round and flat unleaven bread). Only those who sang a song to the bride were given a piece of cake. The bride, if she could sing, usually began the singing with a goodbye song to her family and childhood. While she sang, a friend of the family would remove one of her moccasins and auction it off. The proceeds were used to pay the fiddler or help with the wedding expenses. Because of this, the bride took special care to make her wedding moccasins especially pretty.28 Weddings among the upper strata and non-Metis in the settlement were more subdued affairs. According to Thomas Bunn, the weddings of the more 'respectable' concluded with a dinner at the house of the father-inlaw or house of the bridegroom. The evening ended with a glass of spirits, social conversation, and perhaps a song. Intoxication and dancing, he said, were confined to the Vulgar' in the colony.29 The age at which Metis men and women married varied somewhat between parishes and over time, but was similar to the figures for Lower Canada in the period before 1840 (see table 5).30 These figures also agree with what has been termed the 'European marriage pattern' of comparatively late marriage, at least given the predominance of very young brides and grooms that characterized many Asian, East European, and South American populations.31 The older average age at first marriage for males in St Andrew's, as compared to those of St Francois Xavier, is explained by the immigration of large numbers of Hudson's Bay Company families to St Andrew's during the 1830s. These fur trade families often only solemnized their various marriage arrangements on reaching the settlement, despite having lived together according to the 'custom of the country' for many years. While this phenomenon also took place in St Francois Xavier, it was more prevalent in St Andrew's. TABLE 5 Mean Age at First Marriage, to 1840

St F. Xavier

Sorel (Lower Canada)*

St Andrew's

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

26.0

22.3

29.0

22.3

24.1

21.4

Sources: Parish registers; Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740-1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) * The figures for Sorel are from the period 1810-39.

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FERTILITY AND FAMILY SIZE

Given the similarity of age at first marriage for Metis women in the two parishes, their fertility rates should also be similar. Despite some minor differences, they were. The high rates of birth in the period before 1840, particularly in St Andrew's, are almost completely attributable to the circumstances of parish formation in this period. Since these birth rates are derived from the baptisms recorded in the respective parish registers, birth rates can be distorted by baptisms taking place long after birth.32 In both St Frangois Xavier and St Andrew's, the keeping of parish records began only during 1834-5, when many adults and younger children were baptized. This was especially the case before 1840 as priests tried to catch up with the baptism of the recently converted residents who had just moved into the settlement with their children. It is a simple task to exclude the adult baptisms from the above calculations,553 but it is not always possible to tell which children were baptized long after their birth. With migration into these parishes falling off after 1840, however, it is likely that few older children would have been baptized after 1840. By this time, the birth rates in the two Metis parishes had evened out. C R I S I S A N D S T R U C T U R A L M O R T A L I T Y I N T H E 1830S

Mortality (or the incidence of death) was, like fertility, a basic regulator of growth in Red River communities. A detailed examination of this phenomenon not only illuminates the impact of epidemic diseases on Metis populations, but tells us something about the economic and social evolution of the Red River Metis. In particular, crises in mortality in the mid18408 and early 1870s were very disruptive occurrences. An epidemic of measles during 1845-6 played a role in eroding faith in the colony's governing elite. Similarly, the high mortality of the early 1870s influenced the dispersal of the Metis from Red River. TABLE 6 Mean Birth Rates, 1834-49 (births per 1,000 population) Period

St F. Xavier

St Andrew's

1834-9 1840-9

66.92 56.01

80.49 53.60

Source: Parish registers and Red River censuses

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Mortality rates were generally high in pre-industrial populations. The number of deaths typically fluctuated greatly from year to year with unusually large numbers occurring in times of crisis. The extent of mortality fluctuation over time depended on social, economic, political, and environmental conditions in local areas that affected the response of populations to climatic conditions, food shortages, famine, diseases, epidemics and socio-political disturbances. The level of real income enjoyed by a group also played a part in determining its death rate. Families without sufficient food and clothing, living in dark and cold hovels, were much more susceptible to disease and death.34 Largely, the mortality patterns in both St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's corresponded to this pre-industrial pattern of wildly fluctuating mortality rates and periodic crises. The levels of crisis mortality in Red River, however, were much lower than those in pre-industrial Europe. In addition, infant mortality rates were much lower in Red River than in preindustrial peasant societies in Europe or even in Lower Canada. To some extent, this was because the low population density created less pressure on the food-producing capacity of the society. When crops failed in Red River, settlers could usually rely on the hunt and fisheries. Dearth, extreme poverty, and dire necessity, which characterized peasant life in Europe, were not nearly as prevalent in Red River.35 Crisis mortality in Red River usually coincided with the outbreak of disease. Although much is known about the effects of European diseases on native populations,36 little has been written about the specific effects of disease on the Metis or on the Red River Settlement, except to observe that the effects on the Metis were much less destructive than on the Indian. The usual reason given for this discrepancy is that the Metis' European ancestry provided them with more natural immunity than the Indian. A cursory examination of the documents shows that European diseases did affect the Metis in epidemic proportions, and that these epidemics had a significant impact on the Red River Settlement. An examination of burials in the parishes of St Andrew's and St Francois Xavier suggests that 1843-6, 1855, 1865, 1873, and 1878 were years of high mortality. This general pattern of a ten-year period of crisis mortality is in keeping with evidence that shows that infectious diseases return in intervals of five to ten years but in lessening severity as the proportion of persons with effective immunity increases. With the slow build-up of immunity, these diseases increasingly become childhood diseases.37 The tenyear intervals of high mortality, moreover, were almost identical in the two parishes (see fig. 2). Though the parishes were separated geographically

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FIGURE 2 St Frangois Xavier and St Andrew's Burials, 1834-90

Source: Parish registers

and culturally, their mortality figures were very similar in crisis years. This suggests that the epidemics were settlement-wide. Mortality crises in Red River, as in most pre-industrial populations, were also affected by subsistence crises. The nature of the subsistence economy of the Red River Metis, based as it was on the hunt and the farm, meant that food shortages would occur only when both failed in the same year. Such crises, of course, affected the entire settlement. Most instances of mortality crises before the 1860s were disease-related, but crop failures did play a role. An example of the differential effect of disease, given different subsistence conditions, occurred in the period 1835-7. In June of 1835, Rev. William Cockran noted that an influenza epidemic had hit the colony: An epidemic rages of the most alarming nature it seizes the old, the middle aged, the young and the infant; all are groaning, and many are prostrate under its evil influence ... The symptoms all are similar, soreness of throat,

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69

excruciating pains in the chest; debility and pains in the limbs; violent headache, and earache; a discharge of pus from the ears; deafness; delirium; inflammation of the eyes; intermitting fever; and severe cough and in some accompanied with expectoration of blood.S8 The influenza had been carried to the Red River Settlement by the York boat brigades travelling to Red River and the interior from Norway House and York Factory.39 The sickness in the colony continued into the winter and spring of 1836, with most deaths occurring in 1836. While the disease affected all segments of the population, death struck disproportionately among children under five years of age.40 Influenza seems to have died out in the summer of 1836 but reappeared in St Andrew's and the Indian Settlement in 1837, without affecting St Francois Xavier to any extent. In all probability, the difference was related to crop failures in St Andrew's and the Indian Settlement in the summer and fall of 1836, which led to a shortage of provisions in the two communities during the winter and spring of 1837.41 In St Francois Xavier, the crops do not seem to have been affected as adversely,42 and the Metis of this parish were probably better able than the Metis of St Andrew's to shift their provisioning needs to the fall buffalo hunt. At any rate, when influenza appeared again in 1837, the death toll in St Andrew's rose above 1835-6 levels, whereas few deaths were recorded in St Francois Xavier. The structural mortality (normal incidence of death) of the two Metis parishes diverges from the experience of other peasant societies. While the fluctuating mortality rates and periodic crises of Red River are typical of pre-industrial populations, its crude death rates (CDR) calculated by decade were lower than Canadian standards until the 1870s. Before 1870, St. Francois Xavier's crude death rates (deaths per 1,000 population) calculated by decade varied from 12.3 to 20.3 per year; rates for St Andrew's varied from 16.6 to 22.3. Canada's rates in the period from 1850 to 1870 were in the 21-2 range. Another measure of mortality, considered the most sensitive indicator of social, economic, and environmental conditions, is the infant mortality rate (IMR). This is the proportion of children born who die in their first year. By this standard, both St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's were very healthy communities before 1870 in comparison to other pre-industrial societies. Infant mortality rates among the British aristocracy, which in all likelihood had more favourable mortality patterns than the general population, fluctuated around 20 per cent of all births (IMR = 200) dur-

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TABLE 7 Infant Mortality, 1834-69 (per 1,000 live births) Period

St F. Xavier

St Andrew's

1834-9 1840-9 1850-9 1860-9

84.5 80.3 76.6 88.8

30.6 99.6 85.7 124.1

Source: Parish registers and Red River censuses

ing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dropping to 16 percent in the first half of the eighteenth century.43 Red River even compared favourably to one of the healthiest English communities, Colyton (a small English parish), whose IMR fluctuated around 120-40 from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.44 To some extent, the low infant mortality rates of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's before 1870 (see table 7) were the result of a low population density. But their rates were even lower than those of the French-Canadian parish of Sorel, which had a similar population in 1800 to that of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's in the 1860s.45 Migration patterns of the Red River Metis prior to the 1840s reinforce the image of Red River as a stable peasant community. Of the 94 families in St Andrew's in 1835, 80 per cent still resided in the parish in 1849.46 In St Francois Xavier, nearly 70 per cent of the 97 families were still there in 1849. The difference between these rates of persistence is explained, to some extent, by the increasing specialization of the St Francois Xavier Metis in the buffalo-hunting economy by the 1840s. Participation in the buffalo-robe trade demanded long absences from the colony and eventual emigration. Before 1849, however, the families that emigrated permanently were generally younger and smaller, with fewer resources. These characteristics are consistent with what has been termed traditional migration: generally unsystematic migrations consisting of conservative group movements and idiosyncratic movements of individuals.47 The limited qualitative evidence related to emigration from Red River before 1849 confirms this. In the 1830s and 1840s there was a small but steady trickle of emigrants to the United States from all communities in the settlement, along with the movement of Hudson's Bay Company servants and officers to other posts in the Northwest. The one larger movement consisted of the trek of twenty families to the Columbia River district on the west coast under the direction of James Sinclair. This migration had been or-

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71

ganized by the Hudson's Bay Company to counteract the projected American movement of settlers into Oregon.48 The impact of these migrations on the colony was small. By 1835 the various Metis communities of Red River had established a way of life that produced similar demographic regimes. In the period before 1849, these peasant communities had similar fertility and mortality regimes, and exhibited a strong geographic stability or persistence. It was only with changes in the economy in the Red River Settlement in the late 1840s-changes that would integrate the colony into the wider world-that the Metis demographic regime altered and produced large upheavals in the settlement.

FOUR

The Metis and the Transition to Market Capitalism, 1840-1870

The start of competition in the Red River economy during the 1840s marked the beginning of great social and political change.1 Previously, the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly and the distance to American markets had ensured that the colony would be connected to only one pricesetting market. In effect, the Hudson's Bay Company acted as an efficient vehicle for channelling an outward flow of furs and an inward flow of goods. The opening of American fur markets after 1844, however, transformed the Metis political economy in Red River. Metis who adapted to the new opportunities divided between surplus producers and surplus takers. This created a situation in which the Metis merchant or trader could come into his own. Some Red River Metis specialized and competed in the production of goods and the provision of services. Not all Metis individuals or communities reacted to these changes in the same way. Most of the Metis of St Francois Xavier eagerly responded to the increased demand for buffalo robes and furs by transforming their household economies into 'factories' for the production of these items. In St Andrew's, the Metis reacted differently. Some became involved in the buffalo-robe trade, some in the new expanding business of contract freighting, and some in the cattle trade to the United States. But many more simply continued their peasant subsistence farming. Thus, by the 1860s, Metis society in Red River was differentiated and divided along occupational lines. These developments were not simply imposed from the outside, with the Metis playing no purposeful role or reacting blindly; rather, the Metis themselves acted decisively to control or take advantage of these changes. Similarly, the resurgence of Metis involvement in the fur trade did not signal a return to 'primitivism' or 'nomadism,' but to a proto-industriali-

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73

zation of the Metis family economy. Metis families increasingly combined the manufacture of buffalo robes and leather goods with subsistence farming and hunting. This turn to 'cottage industry' had social repercussions. The intrusion of proto-industry altered the operation of the Metis household. With the rise of manufacturing and production for market, the Metis family was no longer a closed unit of production and consumption; instead, it became enmeshed in a complex network of commerce. Not only were women and children ever more of an economic asset in this cottage industry, but young adults no longer needed to delay marriage until they inherited or acquired a farm, or got work with the Hudson's Bay Company. They could now quickly earn their livelihood in this new 'industry.' As Irene Spry has written, the buffalo hunt was the basis of the first great industry in Western Canada. That is was carried on on the open plains, not in a factory, did not make it any less an industry. Once the buffalo were killed, the carcasses had to be butchered, the meat dried or made into pemmican, shaganappi and sinews processed, and the robes and hides prepared for use. All the functions of a modern packing plant and tannery were performed by the hunters and their wives and families, using traditional labour-intensive methods.' 2 Involvement in this new 'rural industry' affected Metis family life, fragmented Metis communities along socio-economic lines, led to an abandonment of agriculture, and served as an important impetus to emigration from Red River.3 In 1843 George Simpson, the chief administrator of the Hudson's Bay Company in North America, informed the governors of the company that although inhabitants of Red River were complaining about the absence of a market, he did not 'know any peasantry so comfortable and independent in their circumstances.' 4 Just a year later, Norman Kittson reestablished a trading post at Pembina (113 kilometres south of Red River) in American territory and brought the American market to the colony's front door.3 His post created an alternative, external fur market and became a source of supplies and capital that transformed the Metis economy of the region. Metis responded to this new economic opportunity for several reasons. The Hudson's Bay Company provided employment for many male children of former employees, but it offered no outlet for the ambitious. Despite greater use of Metis as seasonal labour, the company increasingly engaged its officer class in Britain.6 Metis fathers found it difficult in these circumstances to find employment for their sons. A trading career outside the company's monopoly was the best alternative for able young men. A second reason for the turn to illicit fur trading was a generational con-

74

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flict that reflected the growing gulf between company officers and Metis servants. Young Metis Involved in the clandestine trade of the 1840s openly scoffed at the rebukes of older principal settlers. When, in 1845, James Bird (a former Hudson's Bay Company officer and presiding magistrate of the General Court) ordered Peter Garrioch to pay the 4 per cent duty on goods he had imported from the United States, Garrioch wrote sarcastically in his journal: The Old Coon will find that I am not quite so great an ass as he takes me to be ... Old man, you have been young and now you are old, but I assure you that you will again become young, and old enough again after that, before your most humble servant will be so stupid and impertinent as to trouble you with a call. Your humble servant knows his place better than that. He does not like to insinuate himself into the affairs of big folk at all.7

Even Cuthbert Grant, formerly the leader of the Metis of St Francois Xavier and appointed 'Warden of the Plains' by the Hudson's Bay Company, had by then lost much of his influence among the Metis.8 His actions in seizing the furs of several private traders and helping to enforce the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly earned him the enmity of most younger Metis. On one occasion, a Metis trader named Chartrand actually threatened to kill Grant. Peter Garrioch noted that had Chartrand shot Grant, he would certainly have been acquitted by a Metis jury.9 A series of devastating crop failures further stimulated the transformation of the Metis economy in the 1840s. In the five-year period from 1844 to 1848, only the year 1845 produced a harvest sufficient to feed the colony. The wheat crop was a general failure in both 1846 and 1847,10 resulting in widespread famine. Likewise, the hay crop was so poor in 1847 that most settlers arranged to winter their cattle out on the plains.11 By August 1848, the settlement was on the threshold of starvation.12 Faced with a limited market for grain and a succession of bad crops, it was no wonder that many Metis abandoned agriculture and concentrated on the expanding fur trade market. Even without poor crops, according to Simpson, 'the want of market (for wheat) ... has prevented any agriculturalists from expanding their farms and increasing their livestock beyond the requisite quantity to meet the demands of the Company and their own absolute wants.'13 By the late 1840s, even the greatest proponents of agriculture-the ministers of the Church Missionary Society-realized that the land had 'scarcely any value being so abundant, and the produce of land, which is at times thirty fold has no market, and therefore cannot be converted into money.'14

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75

The buffalo robe was the main item in the Metis fur trade after 1840. A robe was the skin of the buffalo with the hair left on and the hide tanned. Prime robes, or those harvested in winter, fetched good prices in the St Paul, New York, and Montreal markets-up to $10 a robe by the 1870s. Robes taken in summer were of no value other than as leather as most of the hair had fallen or been rubbed out. Eastern industries converted prime robes into sleigh throws, wraps, bedding, boots, and coats. The U.S. Army provided a strong market for the exceptionally warm coats. The outbreak of the Civil War further pushed prices up by creating a heavy demand for robes.I:1 Indian or Metis women usually tanned the robes. This was a time-consuming and laborious process, requiring four days of steady work to dress and tan just one robe. According to various accounts, the robe was stretched out on the ground and held down with wooden pegs or pins. Using a sharp tool, the women would then scrape away every particle of flesh. If the skin was not to be dressed until later, they left it to dry until quite hard. If it was to be dressed at once, they would rub it for at least a day with a mixture of liver, fat, and animal brains to soften the skin. It was then left for two to three days (according to the season or temperature) until the grease had soaked in. They then dried the robe before a slow fire and beat or rubbed the skin with a stone until it became pliable. When the robe had been prepared in this manner and was quite dry, the women would begin the fatiguing process of rubbing it around a taut rope or braided leather to make it smooth.16 When properly prepared, the robe was as soft as a blanket and ready for market. As the Metis established closer trading ties with American traders at Pembina, St Joseph, and a number of points in the Turtle Mountains and the Souris Basin in the 1840s, the buffalo-robe trade became important to the Red River economy. Buffalo robes had become the prime trade item on the Upper Missouri as the beaver had become depleted in this area during the late 1830s. The reorganized St Louis Fur Trading Company of Pierre Chouteau, Jr (1838), finding the robe trade a very profitable replacement of for the greatly reduced beaver trade, expanded its operations on the Upper Missouri. Between 1839 and 1842 the company's capital investment on the upper river rose from $30,000 to $60,000, and its trading force increased from 90 to 130 men. 17 The establishment of Kittson's post at Pembina in 1844, which was part of this expansion, was fed by the growing demand for buffalo robes in both the United States and Canada. The Metis responded to this new opportunity by openly defying the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly. Their smuggling of furs and robes across the border effectively broke the monopoly by 1849. The com-

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pany, previously hesitant to trade for buffalo robes because of their bulk and the difficulty of transporting them to York Factory, began in the 1840s to instruct its traders to encourage this trade.18 Writing to London in 1843, George Simpson explained that 'Buffalo, which have been exceedingly scarce for a great length of time in this district [Sask.], have during the three past years been numerous about Forts Pelly &: Ellice, enabling us to trade a large quantity of Buffalo Robes, and instructions have been given this year to encourage that branch of trade to such extent as our means of transport to the coast may admit.'19 He went on to note that there was an increasing demand for the robes in both the United States and Canada, and that the Indian and Metis were paying more attention than usual to the preparation of skins and robes. Within six years, the Hudson's Bay Company was selling ten to twelve thousand robes a year on the Montreal market. In 1865 it shipped more than eighteen thousand robes to Canada.20 The Metis continued to farm on a small scale and to trade in dried meat and pemmican. For years, they had produced large quantities of pemmican and dried meat on their summer and fall hunts. They had used this to sustain themselves in winter and to sell to the fur-trading companies. Shipments to St Paul after 1840 also included leather products such as embroidered moccasins, leather coats, horse gear, and other bead-andquill work. References to these items of manufacture and trade, however, are very scarce, and quantities seem to have been small. Evidence from the 1870s suggests that the returns for these trade items seldom reached more than $1,000 a year.21 The buffalo-robe trade was clearly the new dynamic element in the Metis economy of the 1840s through the 1860s. As the Nor'Wester observed, 'the great business in this country is, at present, the trade in furs ... Farming, shop-keeping, and all other vocations whatsoever, dwindle to the merest nothing when compared, in point of profits, with this vast business.'22 The Nor'Wester was referring not to the activities of the Hudson's Bay Company but to those of freeman traders and hunters. Norman Kittson, who had precipitated this new trade in the region by opening the post just south of the border at Pembina, returned to Mendota in 1857 with more than four thousand buffalo robes.23 In 1865 alone, carts from Red River Settlement conveyed nearly twenty-five thousand robes to St Paul.24 As it had before, the Hudson's Bay Company tried to check illicit trade in the 1840s through ever more stringent regulations. Company governors revised the conditions of land tenure, making fur trading a contravention of one's lease; they put duties on goods imported from the United States

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(1844-5); and they tightened currency circulation (1844) in the colony. None of these measures had much impact on the trade.23 Company officers despaired of ever stopping this trade without the forcible seizure of goods and the stationing of troops in the settlement.2" With the arrival of troops in 1846, open discontent in the colony subsided and the illicit trade diminished, but when the troops left in 1848, the trade rebounded stronger than ever. Expressions of discontent over the company's policy then escalated. When John Ballenden, the Hudson's Bay Company's administrator in Red River, decided to stop the smuggling by seizures and arrests in 1849, the issue came to a head. The arrest and trial of Guillaume Sayer and three others had the effect of opening the trade to all Metis. Though found guilty, Sayer was released because of the threat of violence from the Metis massed in and around the court-house. The event proved that the company could no longer enforce its monopoly. This Metis uprising was unlike the revolts of the 1830s. Championed by free traders such as Peter Garrioch, James Sinclair, and Pascal Breland, the 1849 revolt had a clearly stated ideology of free trade, and the Metis had acted deliberately to gain their end. Emerging from the court-house, Sayer was greeted with cries of 'Le commerce est libre, le commerce est libre, vive la liberte.' As the restraints and monetary disadvantages that accompanied the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly ceased to operate, a new economic era opened for the Metis. With it came the development of an indigenous Metis bourgeoisie along with new occupations and opportunities for the rest of the Metis. Increasingly, the Metis became involved in commodity production for market (furs, particularly buffalo robes) rather than for home consumption. Their surplus production, no longer subject to the appropriation of the Hudson's Bay Company, was increasingly appropriated by merchant traders, many of whom were Metis themselves. The Metis response to this new economic opportunity can be glimpsed in a number of ways. Beginning in the late 1840s and accelerating throughout the 1850s and 1860s, Metis wintering or hivernant communities multiplied west of Red River and Pembina. Because good, well-furred buffalo robes had to be taken in winter, with the best taken in the period from November through February (before this the buffalo hair had not attained it full growth and lustre, and after this it had begun to show wear and lose colour), robes were seldom obtained on the Metis summer buffalo hunts. While it was still possible to winter in St Joseph in the 1850s and be close enough to the winter range of the buffalo to get winter robes, this could no longer be done by wintering in the Red River Settlement

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or Pembina. Consequently, more plains Metis families began spending their winters in small temporary communities in the Turtle Mountains, the Souris Valley, the Qu'Appelle Valley, at Wood Mountain, and in the Saskatchewan River area. Here buffalo were usually plentiful during the winter. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, even St Joseph Metis were leaving to winter on the plains, many never to return. These wintering sites varied in size from a few families to large camps with as many as one thousand inhabitants at sites like Buffalo Lake in the 1870s. As early as 1856, Governor Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company was reporting on the phenomenon of wintering villages in the Saskatchewan District: The frontiers of this district lies [sic] very much exposed to the inroads of Red River traders, being accessible from the settlement, across the plains at all seasons and in every quarter. A large body of people last winter found their way to the neighbourhood of Carlton and Fort Pitt ... Those people congregate for convenience and safety in villages, consisting of huts roughly constructed, but sufficient to protect them from the weather and to afford room for their goods and furs. There was one of these villages last winter at what is known as the Grosse Butte, about two days march SE of Carlton, consisting of 30 c 40 houses or huts.27

Metis dwelling at Wood Mountain, circa 1874

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MAP 4 Metis Wintering Sites, 1840s to 1870s

The hivernants, as these Metis winterers were called, chose a sheltered site with water and wood near the buffalo's anticipated winter range, building their cabins in the late fall. They usually abandoned these sites after one or perhaps two winters. Norbert Welsh, who was a trader and hunter in the 1860s and 1870s, estimated that he had built about twenty wintering houses during his years on the plains. At least until the late 1860s these winterers would return to Red River or St Joseph in the spring. May and June were the busiest months for traders in the Red River Settlement, as this was when the winterers returned from the plains to spend about a month trading their furs. These winterers preferred to reach Fort Garry by the Queen's birthday on May 24, which offered a day of celebrations at Fort Garry including horse racing and other sporting events. Having sold their furs, robes, meat, and leather, the Metis would then return to the plains with the summer buffalo hunt or to their wintering quarters.28 By the 1860s, there was great competition in Red River for their robes. In addition to the Hudson's Bay Company, two traders bought robes for fur houses in Canada, three American 'runners' worked for St Paul fur houses, and a host of adventurers regularly traded there.29 Among these fur buyers was Alexander Paul, who arrived in the settlement from the Lake Superior region byway of St Paul, and bought out Norman Kittson's

80

Homeland to Hinterland

trading interests in St Boniface. In 1863 alone, Paul shipped $50,000 worth of furs and robes to St Paul.30 The increase in the number of carts travelling annually to St Paul and the value of the St Paul fur trade were another indication of the extent and expansion of this trade. St Paul cart arrivals increased from a mere six in 1844 to more than 1,400 by 1865, while the value of the fur trade at St Paul rose from $1,400 in 1844 to $300,000 in 1865. Much of this trade, largely in buffalo robes, was with the Red River Metis. It was common to have 1,000 to 1,500 Red River Metis carts encamped around Larpenteur's Lake in June in the western part of St Paul loaded with buffalo robes, furs, pemmican, and leather goods.31 St Paul businessmen estimated that the Red River trade carried on by the Metis amounted to $150,000 in 1866.32 Trade statistics from the first few years of the 1870s show that furs and robes accounted for nearly all exports from Manitoba, and buffalo robes were the major single item of this trade. One effect of this burgeoning trade was that those Metis involved in the buffalo-robe trade began to abandon agriculture in the Red River Settlement. Clearly one could not winter in the Northwest and practise subsistence agriculture on the river lots in the Red River Settlement. As well, the buffalo-robe trade depended on the processing skills and labour of Metis women, and whole families left the Red River Settlement for the fall and winter and sometimes for years at a time. Participation in the buffalo-robe trade increasingly took those involved away from their crops and livestock, and by the late 1840s Metis were increasingly forced to choose between subsistence farming in Red River or a hivernant existence on the plains. At the time of the 1849 census, it was clear that some Metis families had abandoned their farms completely. While the total area under cultivation increased from 3,504 acres in 1835 to 6,392 acres in 1849, some communities showed a decrease in cultivated acres though their population had almost doubled. In St Francois Xavier, the average cultivated acreage per family dropped from 6.12 acres in 1835 to 3.19 acres in 1849. Cultivated acreage per person during this time declined from 1.17 acres to 0.58 acres. This was in contrast to St Andrew's, which maintained its subsistence level of agriculture of about one cultivated acre per individual (see fig. 3, p. 83). Thus, if the decline in cultivation can be seen as an indication of an increasing involvement in trading activities, clearly the response to the hunt-based industry was much greater in St Francois Xavier. The Metis in St Andrew's, to a much greater extent, continued the pattern of subsistence agriculture initiated in the 1830s. While there are several reasons

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TABLE 8 Number of Red River Carts Travelling Annually to St Paul and Value of the St Paul Fur Trade, 1844-66 Year

No. of R.R. carts

1844 1845 1846 1850

6 -

1851 1853 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866

102 400 500 800 1,400 1,400

Value of fur trade

$1,400 3,000 5,000 13,000 –

40,000 –

97,000 –

161,022 150,000 186,165 198,000 202,000 250,000 300,000 300,000 –

Sources: James H. Baker, 'History of Transportation in Minnesota,' Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society 9 (St Paul 1901), 20-1; J. Fletcher Williams, A History of the City of Saint Paul to 1875 (St Paul 1983), 304-8; HBCA, D4/75, Letter of George Simpson to Governors, 29 June 1855; CMS Records, 1C, LB VI, Rev. Kirkby to Secretaries, 2 August 1858; Nor'Wester, 31 January 1866; Arthur J. Larson, The Northwestern Express and Transportation Company,' North Dakota Historical Quarterly 6 (October 1931), 42-62

for this difference, not the least of them was that the cultural antecedents of St Francois Xavier Metis were the Great Lakes Metis, who had once before acted as middlemen in the St Lawrence-based fur trade.33 This undoubtedly gave them an added advantage in responding to the new trading opportunities of the 1840s. Another factor that may explain why St Andrew's Metis were less likely to adapt to the new trading opportunities was that St Andrew's contained more families headed by a European male.34 Those Metis families headed by a European male were older and larger, and generally cultivated about double the amount of land as those families headed by a Metis male. That British troops were stationed at Lower Fort Garry (in the Parish of St Andrew's) during 1846-8 also created a short-lived market for agricultural products.

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Metis traders, circa 1872-5

TABLE 9 Population and Cultivation in Red River, 1849 St Andrew's

SIR Xavier

%*

Total population % increase (from 1835) No. of single adults No. of families Average family size % Metis (fam. heads) Cultivated acreage % change (from 1835) Average cult, acreage per family Average cult, acreage per person No. cultivating more than 10 acres No. cultivating more than 20 acres Cult, acreage per Metis fam. head Cult, acreage per Eur. fam. head Source: Red River census, 1849 * Percentage of Red River totals

1,068 95 10 187 5.66 68 1,366 +141 7.3 1.28 58 14 5.2 10.62

19.8

17.8 21.3

_ -

Red River

%* 911 81 4 165 5.49 82 527 -11 3.19 0.58 22 5 2.6 5.1

16.9

5,391 48

_

_

15.7

1,052 5.13

_

_

8.2

6,392 +82 6.1 1.19

_ _ _ -

_ _ – -

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FIGURES Cultivation per Person, 1835-70*

* Cultivation figures for 1870 were derived from surveyor notes and maps for the parishes of St Frangois Xavier and St Andrew's. For this reason there are no settlement-wide figures.

The connection between the new trading opportunities and the decline of agriculture was observed by the Nor'Wester. The newspaper noted that sheep had been introduced in 1830 and increased in numbers until 1846, when there were 4,222 sheep in the settlement. They then declined to 3,096 in 1849, to 2,245 in 1856, and to even fewer by 1860. This decrease, according to the Nor Wester, had to do with the increase of dogs in the settlement, which in turn was related to the increase in plains trading. The dogs, of course, ravaged the sheep: About the year 1848 parties commenced their excursions out of the Settlement to trade with the Indians, and were of course accompanied by dogs.

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Homeland to Hinterland

The traffic and the dogs increased year after year; and as the dogs increased the sheep diminished. They were attacked and destroyed by the dogs, and as it was difficult to trace the ownership of the depredators, sheep farming grew smaller by degrees, until in our day it has nearly gone out of fashion altogether.35

Between 1849 and 1870 cultivated acreage in St Francois Xavier rose to an average of 3.99 acres per family and 0.7 acres per individual, no doubt reflecting the improved farming prospects in the 1850s. Even this increase, however, is deceptive since most of the increase can be attributed to a few families in the parish. There were still only eighteen families (5 per cent) who cultivated twenty or more acres, with 6 per cent of the families accounting for 50 per cent of the cultivation. Another reason for the increase in average cultivated acreage was that many who had abandoned agriculture were gone from the parish by 1870 and therefore no longer counted in the censuses of the settlement. In St Andrew's, the average cultivation per family and person remained at the subsistence levels of 1849. Unlike St Francois Xavier, cultivation was a little more evenly distributed among the population. By 1870 there were forty-nine families (15 per cent) cultivating more than twenty acres; however, 9 per cent of the families in St Andrew's still accounted for 50 per cent of the cultivation. Clearly, by 1849, and continuing until 1870, the two communities of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's diverged economically. By the 1860s, the buffalo-robe trade was a large commercial operation and involved large numbers of Metis. As such, it is not surprising that the trade had a significant impact on their family economy and social structure. The robe trade made possible the good life that Metis could only dream of previously. By the late 1860s, there were literally dozens of robe traders making $1,000 or more per year.36 These included Metis such as Peter Garrioch, William and John Dease, Norbert and Urbain Delorme, Cuthbert and William McGillis, William Hallet, Antoine Gingras, George Racette, William McMillan, Norbert Welsh, Alexander and Pascal Breland, Alexis and Moise Goulet, and Alexander and Dominique Ducharme. Norbert Welsh claimed to have made $4,300 on a $1,000 outfit in 1866. This, however, must be an exaggeration as it is based on claims of having sold his buffalo robes to a St Paul trader at $20/robe-an unrealistic figure even for the late 1860s.37 However, even if one were to halve the price he received per robe to $10 (robes were selling for $12 a robe in St Paul that year),38 he would still have cleared over $1,000 on his outfit.

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TABLE 10 Population and Cultivation in St Andrew's and St Frangois Xavier, 1856 and 1870 St F. Xavier

St Andrew's

Total population No. of single adults No. of families Average family size % Metis (fam. heads) Cultivated acreage Average cult, acreage per family Average cult, acreage per person No. cultivating more than 1 0 acres No. cultivating more than 20 acres Cult, acreage per Metis fam. head Cult, acreage per Eur. fam. head

1870

% change

+21 1,456 44 287 +34 4.91 -13 75.1 2,002 +22

1,101 178 6.18 582

1,857 2 334 5.47 91.2 1,335

+69 +88 -12 +129

1870

1,207 214 5.64 1,646

% change

1856

1856

7.7

6.97

-9

3.26

3.99

+22

1.4

1.37

-2

0.53

0.72

+36

-

74

-

-

35

-

-

49

-

-

18

_

-

8.8

-

-

3.8

-

—

8.8

—

—

18.82

—

Sources: Red River nominal census of 1870a; Red River tabulated census of 1856b a

b

Since the 1870 census did not give cultivation figures, these were abstracted from the surveyor's returns of 1871-3. This census, unlike the earlier Red River censuses, also listed each individual rather than adults and family groups. Family groupings, however, were easy to discern from the census returns. Since a complete copy of the nominal census for 1856 no longer exists, many of the calculations made for the other census werre not possible for this census.

Some indication of the nature of the interaction between merchant capital and the Metis household production can be gleaned from the examples of Peter Garrioch, Pascal Breland, and Norbert Welsh. Garrioch, the eldest son of William Garrioch, a retired employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Nancy Cook, was educated in the parish schools of Red River and became a teacher in the Parish of St John's. Frustrated with his circumscribed position and the lack of opportunity in the colony, he left to find his fortune in 1838. By 1842 he was under contract to trade for

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Homeland to Hinterland

the American Fur Company at the Souris River. With the increased market for furs in the 1840s, Garrioch began to trade on his own account. Lacking the capital to outfit himself, he approached his uncle, James Sinclair, a prominent merchant in the Red River Settlement, and asked for an advance of goods. He received £130 worth of goods.39 Using Red River as a base of operations, he then began excursions to Lake Manitoba, Swan Lake, and the Souris River to accompany the buffalo hunts with his cart-loads of goods. At times he also equipped other Metis such as Francois Gariepy and Baptiste Desmarais of St Francois Xavier to trade for him at Turtle Mountain. The returns of these trips were smuggled across the border and traded at Kittson's post at Pembina or at St Paul. When he accompanied the buffalo hunts on the plains, Garrioch would hire Metis women to do the processing of meat and robes received in trade from the Metis hunters. And, while he was away, his brother tended the family farm.40 The farm was less important than his trading activities. In 1835, when Garrioch's father was still alive, the family farm had 20 acres under cultivation, owned 10 oxen and 2 horses, 2 ploughs, 4 harrows, and 2 carts. By 1849, with Peter in charge of the farm, cultivation had barely increased to 23 acres. The number of horses, however, had more than tripled to 7 and the number of carts doubled to 5-indicating Peter's increasing involvement in trade. Pascal Breland, the son of Pierre Joseph du Boishue dit Berland/ Breland, a French-Canadian freeman, and Josephte or Louise Belly, a Metis, was born in 1811 in the Saskatchewan District. A hunter and trader, the elder Breland fell on hard times and moved his family to the Red River Settlement in the 1820s. He eventually'settled in St Francois Xavier, cultivating a small acreage and following the buffalo hunt. In 1829, after the death of his father, Pascal took over the family farm, and by the 1840s was a leading free trader in the settlement.41 His career as a trader was helped immeasurably by his marriage in 1836 to Marie Grant, the daughter of Cuthbert Grant. Grant was not only the leader of the St Francois Xavier Metis but one of the few Metis allowed to trade freely by the Hudson's Bay Company. In return for this privilege, Grant was to keep other Metis out of the trade. Breland's quick rise to prominence as a trader in the 1840s, before the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly had been broken, was no doubt aided by the protection of his father-in-law. In 1835, before his marriage to Grant, Pascal had only 3 horses and 2 carts, and cultivated 4 acres. By 1849 he still only cultivated 6 acres but had 16 horses, 6 oxen, and 12 carts.42 When Cuthbert Grant died in 1854, Pascal bought out most of the other heirs to Grant's domain and became the largest landowner and trader in St Francois Xavier. He was known generally as roi de

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Pascal Breland, circa 1880

traiteun. By the 1860s, Breland was not only one of the wealthiest Metis traders in the settlement, but also a member of the Council of Assiniboia and president of the district court of White Horse Plain.

88

Homeland to Hinterland

Leaving the care of his farm to sons or relatives, Pascal, his wife, and most of his family spent most winters out of the settlement in the various hivernant communities in the Souris River, Qu'Appelle Valley, Wood Mountain, and Cypress Hills areas. Here he traded for buffalo robes and other furs. Visiting one of Breland's wintering camps in the 1860s, Isaac Cowie, a Hudson's Bay Company trader, noted that most of the rude huts were grouped around the larger and more spacious dwelling of Breland, the leader of the camp. His was a large spacious one-room dwelling accommodating not only his retinue of relatives and employees but also his trade goods. Breland had a second dwelling, where he stored gunpowder, furs, leather, and provisions.43 He was clearly the chief and patriarch of this wintering camp. In a sketch of a contemporary wintering camp, H.M. Robinson noted that [the free-trader] is looked up to by his fellow as a kind of Delphic oracle upon all disputed points, on account of his superior wealth and standing ... he assumes an air of vast importance as the head man of the camp. He becomes the arbiter in all petty disputes, the umpire at horse-races, and general referee in knotty and vexatious games of grand-major, poker and the moccasin-game. His authority is second to none save the priest, who, as the spiritual head of the camp, assumes the first place by right of eminent fitness and propriety.44 Norbert Welsh, entering the buffalo-robe trade nearly twenty years after Garrioch and Breland, followed much the same pattern. He began his trading career at age eighteen in 1862 by hiring himself out to Joseph McKay. This trading party consisted of McKay and his wife and child, McKay's brother-in-law and his wife, and Norbert Welsh, with ten carts of goods and fifteen horses. Wintering near the North Saskatchewan River, the party sold trade goods (mostly whisky) to the Indians for buffalo robes, fox, beaver, and other assorted furs.45 A few years later, Welsh decided to trade for himself and got an outfit worth $500 on credit from Andrew Bannatyne, a prominent merchant in the settlement. By this time, Welsh was married to Cecilia Boyer, the daughter of a plains trader.46 The utilitarian and kin-related benefits of an early marriage are illustrated in Welsh's description of his courtship and engagement. In his memoirs, he noted that the woman he decided to marry after only one meeting was the daughter of a plains trader, and that he knew he had made the right decision after she made him a pair of 'grand moccasins.'47 After his marriage, Welsh regularly wintered with his in-laws on the plains. This group,

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which included his uncle Charles Trottier, hunted and camped together but traded alone. The expansion of this competitive trade in furs and buffalo robes initiated other commercial enterprises. The increased traffic with St Paul by way of cart train created a competitive market for carts in the settlement. Demand increased even more when the Hudson's Bay Company started supplying some of their western posts by cart train rather than via the usual York boat routes. Metis craftsmen built these carts, which sold for five to ten dollars each by the 1860s.48 Because the oak along the Assiniboine was particularly well suited for making cart wheels, St Francois Xavier became the centre for cart manufacturing in the settlement. Some of the best cart builders in the settlement were the sons and grandsons of Francois Richard of St Francois Xavier. Born in Quebec in 1770, Francois entered the fur trade and eventually became an interpreter and cart builder for the Hudson's Bay Company. His son Francois (b. 1810) and grandson Francois (b. 1843) both became independent cart builders in St Francois Xavier.49 By the late 1850s, and throughout the 1860s, the Hudson's Bay Company was regularly instructing its post manager at St Francois Xavier to buy up as many carts as possible. The Hudson's Bay Company always needed new carts for its supply trains, and the competition for them was great among plains traders and hunters.50 Some independent merchants accumulated enough capital to buy their own fleet of carts and York boats. They became involved in contract freighting for the Hudson's Bay Company and other merchants, both to York Factory and St Paul. Henry Youle Hind, who was in the settlement in 1857, noted that 'besides being merchant or trader, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, some of them are freighters, conveying goods between Hudson's Bay and the Valley of Lake Winnipeg. They employ Indians and half breeds to row their boats of three to five tons burden, and haul them and their freights over the portages.'51 The usual freighters to York Factory in the 1850s included Donald Murray (3 boats), Henry Cook (3 boats), Thomas Thomas (3 boats), Thomas Sinclair (3 boats), Edward Mowat (3 boats), and John Inkster (3 boats), along with other boat owners such as Thibault, Marion, Alexander Ross, James Sinclair, Bannerman, McDermott, and McBeath.52 While the 1835 census had listed only one blacksmith shop, the 1849 census listed 11 carpenter shops, 8 blacksmith shops or forges, 3 cooper's shops, and 30 merchant shops of all types. At the time of 1856 census, there were more than 56 merchant shops in the settlement.53 The new economic opportunities available to the Metis in the 1840s, particularly the buffalo-robe trade, not only opened commercial oppor-

90

Homeland to Hinterland

tunities for a growing number of Metis traders and shopkeepers, but created household industries in the Metis parishes. Merely securing the buffalo robes and hides required considerable organization within hunting groups and a clearly defined division of labour. Some workers engaged only in riding and shooting, others in skinning, while still others followed up to stretch and stake out the skins and robes.54 There was a good deal of intensive labour involved in producing a buffalo robe for market, and even though the price paid for buffalo robes on the plains ranged from only $2.50 to $3.00 in the 1860s,55 the production of tanned buffalo robes was profitable for the Metis because of their extensive use of family labour. The use of family labour increasingly made large families economically desirable (see chapter 5), and the intensive labour required to prepare a buffalo robe for market ensured the position of Metis women (wives and older daughters) as an integral part of the business of the buffalorobe trade. The expansion of the buffalo-robe trade by the 1860s involved a significant reorganization of labour. While still largely familial in origin, labour became more specialized, and the Metis were no longer simply involved in subsistence production. Many Metis were involved in the commercial end of the trade; they actively sought to increase their scale of operations and willingly used wage labour to do so. Moise Goulet, a Metis trader, hired many workers to tan buffalo robes for him. As his son noted, 'I suppose if he'd lived in our times he wouldn't have been called a businessman, more likely a vile capitalist.'56 With the growing importance of the robe trade in the 1860s and early 1870s, Metis families in Red River increasingly had to choose among subsistence agriculture in the colony, the hivernant existence that went with the trade, or labouring on the boats and carts originating in the colony. By the 1860s, the Red River buffalo hunt had declined so sharply that no more than 150 carts participated in 1866.57 The herds were now too far away. To continue in the buffalo-robe or provisioning trade meant wintering near the herds. The general failure of the crops made it easier to choose between following the buffalo-robe trade or staying in the Red River Settlement. After fairly successful crop years in the 1850s, the years of drought in the 1860s brought declining yields. Similarly, the almost annual grasshopper infestations after 1864 made agricultural prospects bleak.58 The infestations of grasshoppers in 1867 and 1868, combined with the failure of the plains hunt from Red River, created a crisis in provisions. A relief committee was appointed in 1868 to distribute aid from the United States and Canada. Many people, dreading scarcity, left with their families to winter on the plains.59 Louis Goulet, returning with his father

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to Red River after staying on the plains during 1865-8, found the settlement destitute and quickly decided to return to the plains.60 In combination with rising buffalo-robe prices,61 these conditions led the destitute to abandon agriculture and, eventually, to emigrate from Red River. In addition to increasing the geographic mobility of the Red River Metis, the economic transition of the 1840s and 1850s divided the Red River Metis along occupational and economic lines. By the 1860s, the Nor'Wester noted that Metis involved in the buffalo-robe trade had resolved themselves into two classes: 'the hunter, who follows the pursuits both of bartering for furs and hunting for them ... and the "freeman," who confines himself almost exclusively to the trade of selling goods to the Indians, receiving their furs in payment-a profitable occupation, as the many who have become independent thereby can fully testify.'62 A newcomer to St Francois Xavier from Quebec observed not only that the parish was divided occupationally, but that these divisions also corresponded to where one lived in the parish and how one dressed. While all Metis got along, there were distinct lines and interests in the community. Those who lived in the Pigeon Lake area on the western fringe of the parish were closely tied to the buffalo trade as hunters. They held to traditional cultural practices and were known as the Purs. They wore clothes more reminiscent of their native heritage. The women wore shawls and moccasins and spoke mostly Cree. In the church, they never sat on the benches with the men but preferred to sit on the floor in the aisles.63

Metis traders' camp on the plains, circa 1879

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Homeland to Hinterland

Johnny Grant, who arrived in the settlement in 1868, gave a more detailed description of the dress of these Metis women. Unlike the men, they did not wear embroidered moccasins, but plain moccasins and leggings. Their cloth leggings were embroidered with beads or brightly coloured ribbons in a wavy zig-zag pattern four or five inches up from the ankle. They did not wear hats or cloaks but a piece of fine black cloth about two yards long, which they wore in summer and winter. In winter they simply wore it over a couple of shawls. A coloured silk handkerchief covered their heads.64 Metis hunters also had a distinctive costume. This consisted of beaded moccasins, corduroy trousers, a gaudy shirt, a fine blue capote, and a sash of the most brilliant pattern wound around the waist to make the broadest display. From this sash hung an ornamented piece of black cloth or leather used to carry powder or a shot sack. Metis hunters also wore some version of a tassled cap.65 By contrast, those Metis living on the eastern end of St Francois Xavier, south of the Assiniboine River, were involved in the buffalo-robe trade as merchant traders or cultivated large farms. These Metis were more Europeanized and imitated the dress of French Canadians. Men often wore European suits while retaining moccasin footwear, and their Metis wives wore French hats and shoes, and cotton gowns. The Metis of Pigeon Lake called this part of the Parish Petit Canada. It was in response to this taunt that the Pigeon Lakers were called Purs.** Other occupational groups within the settlement included the subsistence farmers and the growing permanent labour force employed on the boats and cart trains. These boatmen had their own style of dress. Again this consisted of corduroy trousers tied at the knee with beaded garters and moose-skin moccasins. They usually wore a striped shirt open in the front with a cotton handkerchief tied sailor-style around their necks. A scarlet sash encircled their waists, from which hung beaded fire bags containing pipes, tobacco, and flint and steel. Headgear varied widely from blue cloth caps with leather brims to twisted handkerchiefs worn turban style to tall black hats covered with tassels and feathers. On more ceremonial occasions, a greyish blue capote with silver-plated buttons was donned.67 These divisions among the Metis, and their increased geographic mobility, were part of a broader transition occurring within Metis society in Red River. Increasing economic specialization in the buffalo-robe trade, and involvement in capitalist markets, produced a pro to-industrialization of the Metis family economy that affected both family size and age at marriage and resulted in emigration from Red River.

FIVasd

Metis Demography and Pro to-Industrialism in Red River, 1840-1870

The transition to market capitalism in the Red River region during the period 1840-70 produced a demographic change that parallelled changes in rural areas of Western Europe during the eighteenth century. There, domestic production for a wider market accelerated in those regions where soil was poor and subsistence farming was no longer viable. At first, this cottage industry, which exploited cheap, domestically based rural labour, was closely integrated with subsistence farming, occurring only when labour demands in agriculture were low. As the household's livelihood eventually became less dependent on the land or on the amount of land owned, the importance of land declined. There were two main ways in which this might happen. A merchant or loan could establish a household independent of agriculture, which meant that parental control over offspring weakened correspondingly, or children might choose to establish non-farming households. In those areas where household commodity production became prevalent, farming increasingly came to resemble extensive gardening. Production for the market initiated an entirely different fertility regime. As parental restraints declined, the age at first marriage dropped and the cost/incentive structure influencing decisions tilted heavily in favour of childbearing as the labour supply in domestic industry was strictly familial. People were generally too poor to afford to pay wages. Thus, the pool of domestic labour shrank when the age at marriage dropped. Furthermore, collapse of the dowry system and other forms of pre-mortem inheritance removed what had been a strong disincentive to prolific childbearing for poor couples. The demographic regime of the Red River Metis in the period 1840 to 1870 parallelled these European patterns to some extent.

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Homeland to Hinterland

METIS FAMILY FORMATION

In Red River church marriages continued to be the accepted way of beginning a family after the 1830s. Prior to 1870, illegitimate births rose in St Andrew's only in the period 1846-54, coinciding with the presence of soldiers in the settlement. In 1846, on the pretext of the Oregon Crisis, the Red River Settlement had received a garrison of approximately three hundred officers and men of the Sixth Regiment of Foot.1 Quartered at Lower Fort Garry (within the parish of St Andrew's), these soldiers proved troublesome to the clergy in maintaining the morality of their parishioners. Rev. Robert James noted the influence of the Fort Garry garrison in his journal: Was informed today of another instance of seduction of one of our young females by a soldier. I was the more grieved because it has been done in spite of a plain & painful lecture which I gave her a year ago when I had reason to suspect the intercourse ... These are blots on a community hitherto unknown. 2

Although the regiment left the settlement in June 1848, they were replaced by approximately seventy Chelsea pensioners, who proved even more troublesome. They were said to be a wild lot, given to drinking and fighting,3 and were regarded as the scourge of the earth by the clergy. Neither the civil nor the military authority could control them and Governor Colvile observed, 'We have more trouble with the pensioners than all the rest of the settlement put together.'4 By Lower-Canadian and European standards, the ratio of premarital conceptions (children born in the first seven months of marriage) 5 to all first births was also low in both St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's. In St Francois Xavier, the percentage of premarital conceptions to all first births in the period 1834 to 1870 ranged from 1.5 per cent to 6 per cent. In St Andrew's, the percentage ranged from 0 per cent to 5.4 per cent. By comparison, the parish of Sorel, Lower Canada, experienced a rate of 8.4 per cent in the period 1810-39.6 These low rates are explained, to some extent, by widespread early marriage. Marriage at a very young age meant that Metis youths experienced a shorter period in which their sexual urges did not have a socially sanctioned outlet. Yet particular blocks of time do stand out. In St Francois Xavier, the highest number of premarital conceptions occurred in the 1860s. The most obvious explanation is that many Metis from the parish were wintering on the plains by this time.

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TABLE 11 Ratio of Illegitimate Births and Premarital Conceptions, 1834-70

1834-9 1840-9 1850-9 1860-9

% Illegitimate to legitimate births

% Premarital conceptions to all first births

St F. X.

St Andrew's

St F. X.

St Andrew's

1.0 3.0 2.9 -

0.7 0.42 2.3 0.73

4.35 1.5 1.9 6.0

0.0 2.8 5.4 2.4

Source: Parish registers

With no priest resident in the winter camp, couples would be unable to marry until returning to the colony in spring. Some couples chose not to wait until spring to consummate their unions. In St Andrew's, the period of highest premarital conceptions was the decade of the 1850s. This coincided with the period when the pensioners were in the colony. Even so, illegitimacy and pre-nuptial conceptions were low for both parishes. More significant than the illegitimacy rate was the trend towards earlier marriages after the 1840s. By the 1850s and 1860s, it was no longer necessary or even desirable to have a position with the Hudson's Bay Company or to possess a river-lot farm with the requisite tools and buildings to start a separate household. New opportunities in the fur trade allowed young Metis to amass significant amounts of capital, and the exigencies of the buffalo-robe trade made marriage and family an economic asset. Given these new opportunities, one would expect more marriages and fewer persons to remain unmarried permanently. In St Francois Xavier, which was the parish of origin for most of the plains traders and hunters, marriage rates increased after 1850. In the 1840s, St Francois Xavier averaged nine marriages per thousand inhabitants, while in the 1850s and 1860s the parish averaged thirteen marriages per thousand (see fig. 4). In St Andrew's, by contrast, marriage rates decreased after 1850. During the decade of the 1840s marriage rates in St Andrew's had averaged twelve per thousand, falling to less than nine in the 1850s, and to an average of eight in the 1860s. This seemingly inconsistent result, even given a lesser participation in the robe trade by the St Andrew's Metis, makes sense when other factors are considered. In particular, the move of many of the parish's hunters and traders to the new settlement of Portage la

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FIGURE 4 St Frangois Xavier and St Andrew's Marriage Rates, 1845-70

Source: Parish registers

Prairie (which was closer to the plains) in the early 1850s helps to explain this decrease. Most of the Metis who remained in St Andrew's chose not to take advantage of the new trading opportunities in buffalo robes, but continued to support themselves by subsistence agriculture, by shop-keeping, or by labouring for the Hudson's Bay Company. For these Metis, limited access to river-lot farms and tools continued to act as a brake on family formation. Cart ownership was one indication of involvement in the plains trading economy. The 1856 census listed St Francois Xavier residents as owning 483 carts, while St Andrew's residents owned only 221 carts. In contrast, St Andrew's residents owned more than three times the number of ploughs and harrows than the residents of St Francois Xavier.7 The diverging patterns of family formation in the two parishes of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's are further emphasized by the relation-

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ship of marriages to burials. If an increase in the incidence of marriages coincides with a higher incidence of burials in a parish, then it may be assumed that inheritance and the transmission of land to heirs have a strong influence on marriage patterns. Conversely, a negative correlation between burials and marriages in a parish - that is, as deaths increase, marriages decrease - generally indicates that periods of hardship and higher death rates discourage marriage and the formation of new families, and that children marry for their own reasons.8 While the question needs to be studied in more detail for Red River communities, rough figures show a difference in the two parishes of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's. Of the thirty-four years from 1836 to 1870, increases and decreases of marriage and death rates coincided 50 per cent of the time in St Andrew's, while in St Francois Xavier this was the case only 32 per cent of the time.9 This seems to suggest that family formation in St Andrew's was more closely tied to the transmission of property than was the case in St Francois Xavier. Another indication of differing marriage patterns after the 1840s is revealed by the time of marriage. Before 1840 most Metis in the Red River Settlement married in winter. This pattern of winter marriages began to change in St Francois Xavier after 1850. Increasingly, the months of MayJune and August-September become preferable dates for weddings, with September the time of most marriages (see fig. 5). January and February, however, remained popular months for weddings. The explanation for this shift lies in the increasing move to wintering in the 1850s. The increasing importance of the buffalo-robe trade after 1850 required wintering near the buffalo on the plains for those families involved. Out of the settlement for the winter months, these younger couples would marry after they had returned to their home parish in April, or shortly before they left again for the plains in fall. As earlier noted, Norbert Welsh, who met and proposed to his future wife in a wintering camp at Round Plain, married her three days after returning to the settlement on 24 May 1867.10 This continued to be the practice in St Francois Xavier until the more permanent wintering villages in the Northwest began to attract resident priests, and until this wintering experience turned into permanent emigration in the late 1860s and 1870s. With the increase of permanent emigration from St Francois Xavier after the mid-1860s, winter marriages again increase. No parallel seasonal evolution in the time of marriage occurred in St Andrew's. Winter marriage remained the norm throughout the period studied. With most of the St Andrew's Metis involved in the plains trade moving to Portage la Prairie after 1851, wintering on the plains was not a common practice for the remaining St Andrew's Metis.

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FIGURE 5 St Frangois Xavier and St Andrew's Marriages by Month, 1850-69

Source: Parish registers

In both parishes, however, age at first marriage decreased after 1840 (see table 12). While this decrease is to some extent explained by the marriages of older couples in the period 1834-40, who simply solemnized already existing marriages by 'custom of the country,'11 it also reflected economic changes occurring in the colony. Age at first marriage decreased even after 1850, when these older marriages had largely stopped. The lowest age at first marriage for women in both parishes was during the decade of the 1860s-the period of the greatest involvement of the Red River Metis in the robe trade. When new opportunities opened in the fur trade after the 1840s, most of the remaining impediments to an early marriage disappeared as those Metis involved in the buffalo-robe trade benefitted from the familial labour force acquired through marriage. According to

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Metis Demography and Pro to-Industrialism TABLE 12 Age at First Marriage, 1834-69 St Francois Xavier

St Andrew's

Male

Male

Female

Female

Rate of Marriage

No.

Mean

No.

Mean

No.

Mean

No.

Mean

Pre-1840 1840-9 1850-9 1860-9

47 61 117 145

26.0 23.3 23.6 23.5

45 71 119 163

22.3 20.1 20.3 19.8

79 88 76 90

29.0 26.1 24.5 25.2

72 94 80 90

22.3 21.9 20.9 20.5

Source: Parish registers

Peter Erasmus, who was in the Northwest in 1864, early marriages were the custom of the times. 'Most young women were married before they were twenty-one years of age. Young women were considered marriageable at sixteen years of age.'12 Again the rising average age at first marriage for St Andrew's men after 1859 seems to show a different economic situation and different marriage strategy, in keeping with the migration of plains hunters and traders out of the parish to Portage. The declining age at first marriage in both parishes also underscores the degree to which Metis society in Red River was moving away from the norms of the fur trade that characterized the officer class of the Hudson's Bay Company. According to Jennifer Brown, 'of all the nineteenth-century British values that penetrated the fur trade country from the 1820s on, perhaps the most significant was the growing importance attached to the quest for upward mobility.' A concomitant of the emphasis on upward mobility in the fur trade, Brown argues, was the view that rising officers should delay marrying and choose more carefully. This, in turn, led to a growing number of late marriages in the fur trade. Brown argues further that the increase of late marriages in the fur trade had broader consequences as celibacy of the upwardly mobile was not particularly associated with sexual continence. The result, she argues, was increased illegitimacy and infanticide. 13 By the 1840s, this could not have been further from the prevailing view in Red River Metis society. The Metis clearly had far different views of marriage than the Hudson's Bay Company and old NorthWest Company 'gentlemen,' and as we have already seen illegitimacy was low in both parishes studied. Early marriage enhanced a career in the buffalo-robe trade, in which success depended on family labour.

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TABLE 13 Interval in Months between Widowhood and Remarriage, 1834-90

Male Female

St Francois Xavier

St Andrew's

No.

Mean

No.

Mean

53 27

29.6 55.1

32 8*

46.0 57.3

Source: Parish registers * This number includes only those remarried widows for whom information on remarriage time was available. This information was very difficult to determine in St Andrew's, even through a detailed family reconstitution process. On second or third marriages, often the only information given about the widow was her married name. Her maiden name was seldom given, nor were the names of her parents given. Consequently, it was not possible to determine the interval between widowhood and remarriage for many widows in this parish.

Differences in male marriage behaviour in the two parishes is underscored by the figures for time to remarry after widowhood. In St Francois Xavier, those widowers who remarried waited, on average, only slightly more than two years before remarrying, while in St Andrew's widowers waited almost four year (see table 13). The waiting time for those widows who remarried in the two parishes was much more. In both parishes, they waited a good deal longer than men, on average almost five years. In part, this was a result of the inheritance customs among the Metis. While there were no written laws on the matter, surviving wills suggest that the land and buildings were invariably left to both the wife and children. If, however, the mother remarried, many wills stated that the widow forfeited her claim to the land and estate, with all going to the children.14 This undoubtedly would have delayed remarriage and decreased the incidence of remarriage among women. FERTILITY AND FAMILY SIZE

The marriage patterns outlined above had specific implications for Metis fertility and family size. The lower age at marriage for St Francois Xavier Metis as compared to St Andrew's Metis resulted in larger family sizes in that parish (see table 15). In addition, the increase in the marriage rates in St Francois Xavier (number marrying per 1,000 population) in the 1850s and 1860s, a period of new economic activities, was translated into

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FIGURES St Fran?ois Xavier and St Andrew's Birth Rates, 1845-70

Source: Parish registers

an increase in birth rates in these decades (see fig. 6). In short, Metis family dynamics were directly affected within the communities that responded to new economic opportunities. The crude birth rates in St Andrew's remained fairly constant, averaging 50.4 births per 1,000 in the 1840s, 48.4 in the 1850s, and 49.0 in the 1860s. This was roughly equal to the birth rates of Lower Canada in the early nineteenth century. In St Frangois Xavier, however, there was a distinct increase in birth rates after 1850. In the 1840s, birth rates averaged 57.0 per 1,000, climbing to 66.3 in the 1850s, and 68.5 in the 1860s-rates much higher than those of St Andrew's, Lower Canada, and Western Europe.

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TABLE 14 Mean Number of Births to Women by Date of Marriage and Age of Women St Francois Xavier

St Andrew's

Age