Gabriel Dumount & Louis Riel
From the 1770s until the 1821 merger, most voyageurs were French-Canadians from Lower Canada (now the southern portion of Quebec) and to a lesser extent Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and Algonquins (Anishinaabeg). After the fur trade merger, the majority of boatmen working in the fur trade were Métis. Carrying on the voyageur way of life, they paddled transport canoes and York boats in the northern parts of the present-day Prairie provinces. They also unloaded freight canoes and York boats. Louis Riel counted on Métis boatmen, particularly the Portage La Loche brigade, as the muscle needed to support his provisional government during the Red River Resistance in 1869-70.
Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada /Fur Trade - A map detailing the economic activity of the Métis people during the fur trade, ca. 1866 (photo - left)
Metis or Canadiens?
The Métis have used and been called many names over the centuries: Métifs/Michifs, Bois-brûlés/brûlés, Chicots, Country-born, Gens libres/Freemen/Otipemisiwak, Mixed-bloods, Breeds, and Halfbreeds, and sometimes Natives, Canadiens, Countrymen, or Creoles. Some of these were self-referential, while others were given by outsiders.
Terms such as Gens libres, Freemen, or Otipemisiwak(also written kaa-tipeyimishoyaahk), a Cree-Michif term meaning the people who own themselves, and other similar variations demonstrate the centrality of freedom and liberty to Métis self-understanding. "half caste" and "country-born. "half caste" and "country-born. North West Half Breed Commission(which sat from 1885-1887), only people who were deemed capable of being economically self-sufficient were allowed to leave treaty and obtain scrip (thus becoming legally white).
Racially "Indian", Legally "White":
The Canadian State's Struggles to Categorize the Métis,1850-1900
"Follow an eight-person volunteer team as they attempt to recreate the journey made by fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company during the 1840s by travelling from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay. The trip covers 800 miles (1200 kilometers) and takes the team through the heart of the Canadian wilderness."
Haudenosaunee Confederacy
"Called the Iroquois Confederacy by the French, and the League of Five Nations by the English, the confederacy is properly called the Haudenosaunee Confederacy meaning People of the long house.
The confederacy was founded by the prophet known as the Peacemaker with the help of Aionwatha, more commonly known as Hiawatha. The exact date of the joining of the nations is unknown and said to be time immemorial making it one of the first and longest lasting participatory democracies in the world.
The confederacy, made up of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas was intended as a way to unite the nations and create a peaceful means of decision making. Through the confederacy, each of the nations of the Haudenosaunee are united by a common goal to live in harmony." - Haudenosaunee Confederacy
Map (right) Historic and current Haudenosaunee Territory
The great-grand-niece of Louis Riel, the most famous Métis leader, Teillet says it’s almost impossible to separate the Métis from the fur trade.
“I counted once I had something like nine voyageur ancestors,” Teillet says. Like many Métis, she traces her roots back to the late 1700s when an upstart group of Montreal businessmen formed the Northwest Company. Their aim was to crack into the lucrative fur trade dominated by the Hudson’s Bay Company. And they did this by circumventing HBC territory, sending canoe flotillas of French Canadian voyageurs up through the Great Lakes and on into the Canadian prairies.
This competition forced the HBC out of its fur trading forts hugging the shores of Hudson Bay and sent them deeper into the lands of the First Nations people. All of this led to a growing number of alliances forged between First Nations and the fur traders. Ultimately, there were a lot of children born out of the meeting of the two cultures at this time. These children came of age as the Métis people in the early 1800s.
“That’s the generation that starts to give themselves a name; they start to act as a different entity,” says Teillet. “The language that we now call Michif starts to develop and they start to see themselves as separate from their mothers’ First Nations community and from their fathers’ fur-trader western Christian community. They literally, physically separate themselves in their mindset, they think of themselves as a new people, they call themselves La Nouvelle Nation.” - Explore presents the Hudson’s Bay Company - Part 3: The rise of the Métis
If any one community can claim to be the birthplace of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it’s the James Bay Cree Nation of Waskaganish. In 1668, British merchants set up a trading post there, on the shores of the Rupert River, in what is now northern Quebec.
“Then in 1669, they went back to England with all the fur they had traded for,” says Charles Hester, Culture Director for the Cree Nation of Waskaganish, “and people were so impressed with the quality … they made a good amount of money and decided to set up a company, And that’s how the Hudson’s Bay Company was born.”
Hester says the company, which went on to control around eight million square kilometres of northern North America from a series of fur trading posts, owes much of its success to working with the Cree nation. “There’s no way they could have done it without the Cree,” he says. “When they came in it was our people that suggested they establish here on the river, because this was a trade route that goes to all the Cree communities, all the way to Labrador. So they just had to plug into that trade route; everything was already established.” And Hester credits the long relationship with HBC for helping shape Waskaganish into the prosperous northern community it is today.
- Explore presents the Hudson’s Bay Company - Part 2: The rise of the Métis
PHOTO (right) The remains of the old HBC Chief Factor’s house at the Cree Nation of Waskaganish, located in the Eeyou Istchee territory in northern Quebec. (Photo: David McGuffin/Can Geo)