Jacqueline Peterson

So recent is the inclusion of the term Metis in the collective vocabulary and consciousness of historians of the American West that scholarly discourse still centers on the fundamental and seemingly perplexing question of Metis origins. From whence did this numerous, biracial people spring? The question, however naive, both stings and amuses. It has called forth the rejoinder from Antoine Lussier, a Canadian historian of Metis ancestry, that Metis origins can be dated with precision: nine months after the first European male landed in North America! ¹

Arguing with this bit of folk biology might be difficult if the term Metis were merely a French language designator for the offspring of Indian and white parents. However, the pattern of intermarriage accompanying the westward spread of the fur trade after 1700 contributed to far more than a genetically mixed population. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, a distinctive Metis ethnic identity, culture, and nationality had taken root along the banks of the Red River of the north, branching westward along the river corridors of the Northern Plains. Here, in the heartland of the North American continent, homeland of the Cree, Ojibwa, and Assiniboine, Metis people under their messianic leader Louis Riel waged two unsuccessful rebellions for national independence. The dreams of the "New Nation" died on the gallows with Riel in 1885, and the Metis were plunged into poverty and obscurity.

The history of the Metis is well known to Canadians. As we are belatedly discovering, however, Metis history is not specifically and uniquely Canadian. The eighteenth century antecedents of a hybrid Metis cultural complex stretched south and east, to the American Great Lakes. By mid-nineteenth century, collateral communities of peoples neither Indian nor Euro-Ameri-

can had gathered throughout the northern Plains and Pacific Northwest on both sides of the international border. Some of these survive today. ²

Over the past century, considerable attention has been paid to the political history of the aspiring Metis nation but the processes by which Metis identity was formed, the content of Metis culture, and the mechanisms by which it was transmitted intergenerationally still remain obscure. Perhaps this is because, despite Louis Riel's impassioned declaration of Metis consciousness "that we honor our mothers as well as our fathers," ³ the native women who mothered and nourished the growth of a Metis society have been overshadowed by their white male partners and fathers.

This essay does not hope to answer the larger questions of Metis identity and culture formation but instead explores the motivations prompting native females to marry whites in the early stages of fur trade expansion south and west of the Great Lakes, and seeks to resolve an apparent anomaly with regard to the role of women in subsequent Metis cultural development. On the one hand, as Jennifer S. H. Brown has noted in a path-breaking article, native women were both center and symbol in the emergence of Metis communities. ⁴ Since Metis daughters of Indian-white marriages were more likely than Metis sons to remain in the West and to maintain close ties with native mothers and kin, they were the primary contributors via their own marriages to incoming whites and Metis males to the rapid growth of a Metis population in the fur trading zone. It is not surprising, therefore, that Metis life appears to have been characterized by matriorganization, with the female and native side exercising the predominant influences over residence and community, behavioral roles, and ethnic filiation. Ultimately, to be Metis was to claim descent from, and the rights of, a native mother, rather than of a white father.

On the other hand, a core denominator of persistent Metis identity has been a strong attachment to Christianity. Especially among French-speaking Metis, Catholic belief and practice did, and often still does, act as the demarcator between themselves and their Indian relatives. Simply put, Metis attend Mass, not the Sun Dance. But if Metis life was matricentered and native women and their female descendants were the transmitters and translators of Metis culture and identity, what are we to make of the prominence of an intrusive European belief system? How are we to reconcile the apparently mutual influences of strong-minded, perhaps exceptional native women and the religious ideology of the colonizer? What role did Christianity play, if any, in propelling native women toward white males and why did certain women chose, or so it would seem, to abandon the traditions and lifeways of their own people?

The term certain women is deliberate. It may be fairly assumed that the

Over the past century, considerable attention has been paid to the political history of the aspiring Metis nation but the processes by which Metis identity was formed, the content of Metis culture, and the mechanisms by which it was transmitted intergenerationally still remain obscure. Perhaps this is because, despite Louis Riel's impassioned declaration of Metis consciousness "that we honor our mothers as well as our fathers," ³ the native women who mothered and nourished the growth of a Metis society have been overshadowed by their white male partners and fathers.

This essay does not hope to answer the larger questions of Metis identity and culture formation but instead explores the motivations prompting native females to marry whites in the early stages of fur trade expansion south and west of the Great Lakes, and seeks to resolve an apparent anomaly with regard to the role of women in subsequent Metis cultural development. On the one hand, as Jennifer S. H. Brown has noted in a path-breaking article, native women were both center and symbol in the emergence of Metis communities. ⁴ Since Metis daughters of Indian-white marriages were more likely than Metis sons to remain in the West and to maintain close ties with native mothers and kin, they were the primary contributors via their own marriages to incoming whites and Metis males to the rapid growth of a Metis population in the fur trading zone. It is not surprising, therefore, that Metis life appears to have been characterized by matriorganization, with the female and native side exercising the predominant influences over residence and community, behavioral roles, and ethnic filiation. Ultimately, to be Metis was to claim descent from, and the rights of, a native mother, rather than of a white father.

On the other hand, a core denominator of persistent Metis identity has been a strong attachment to Christianity. Especially among French-speaking Metis, Catholic belief and practice did, and often still does, act as the demarcator between themselves and their Indian relatives. Simply put, Metis attend Mass, not the Sun Dance. But if Metis life was matricentered and native women and their female descendants were the transmitters and translators of Metis culture and identity, what are we to make of the prominence of an intrusive European belief system? How are we to reconcile the apparently mutual influences of strong-minded, perhaps exceptional native women and the religious ideology of the colonizer? What role did Christianity play, if any, in propelling native women toward white males and why did certain women chose, or so it would seem, to abandon the traditions and lifeways of their own people?

The term certain women is deliberate. It may be fairly assumed that the

majority, or even the preponderance, of tribal women did not take white husbands or succumb to the appeals of Christian missionaries at any time during the early contact phase in North America. Carol Devens has argued that among the "domiciled" Indian groups of New France, women led the resistance against missionary efforts at conversion. ⁵ It may also be assumed, thanks to the remarkable portrait of "women in between" painted by Sylvia Van Kirk and to Jennifer S. H. Brown's seminal ethnohistorical analysis of fur trade families, that the native wives of fur traders and their Metis daughters were neither degraded drudges, commodities to be bought or sold, or the casual purveyors of sexual favors, stereotypes best buried with the likes of Walter O'Meara's Daughters of the Country. ⁶

Van Kirk, in particular, has ably illustrated the intelligence and forceful personalities of a number of wives of fur traders, women capable of exerting considerable influence within both native and fur trade circles. Although her sources tend to favor the native wives and daughters of men of rank, or women who aroused comment, the women she describes had their counterparts throughout fur trade country, on both sides of the international boundary. ⁷ In the western Great Lakes region alone, women such as Madame Cadotte, Susan Johnston, Sally Ainse, Madame LaFramboise, Therese Schindler, Marinette Chevalier, Domitille Langlade, and Sophia Mitchell achieved prominence as traders, church founders and patrons, and leaders of fur trade communities, while their Metis daughters and granddaughters perpetuated many of these traditions, adding the roles of teacher, translator, and interpreter. ⁸

Van Kirk and Brown have pointed to a number of factors that may have persuaded native women to marry white traders, among them heightened material comfort and physical security, access to trade goods, and personal role expansion. Other factors -- the demographic pressure caused by a possible female surplus among hunting tribes, the benefits to kin of an alliance with whites, the appeal of a more permissive sexual code, a preference for monogamous marriage, and the influence of Christianization -- may have been important. ⁹ Given the slender evidence that has been assembled and analyzed by Van Kirk, Brown, Devens, Peterson, and Mary Wright, however, all of these variables deserve further elaboration, particularly as they may have selectively applied to women of diverse tribal cultures.

From a western European perspective, materialist explanations appear especially plausible; yet, it is precisely because such explanations derive from the normative context of the post-Reformation West, rather than North American tribal society, that they must be approached with caution. While ringing true to the historian, they do not link native women's choices and behavior to the belief systems, traditions, and normative role expectations of

their native cultures. For the Great Lakes, at least, the tribal world was one in which reality was both seen and unseen, tangible as well as thought or dreamed. Nature was not a sphere separate from the supernatural, and spiritual forces and meanings pervaded all of life. Personifications of sacred power-appearing in visions and dreams as animals, medicinal plants, or other natural phenomena -- instructed men and women along the road of life, and most especially in those role choices that were atypical when viewed from a traditional perspective. ¹⁰

The marriages of native women to white fur trade personnel are best viewed in this light. Such behavior was extraordinary, and it may be that the decision, made by only a few, to cross a cultural chasm was fueled by far more than mundane ambition or desire. For some, it may have been a leap of faith.

From the earliest decades of fur trade expansion into the Great Lakes region, native women's impressions of Euro-American males diverged. On the one hand, white men's physical appearance disgusted the sensibilities of some Indian observers. Among the Ojibwa and Ottawa of the upper lakes, natives "disliked the white skins and curly hair [of the French males] and thought beards were loathsome." In contrast to the "soft and delicate" skins of Indian males who plucked their body hair, whites were regarded as "ugly and rude." Similarly, the Eastern Dakota, first visited by Louis Hennepin and Michel Accault at Mille Lacs, Minnesota in 1680 could scarcely believe that the Frenchmen had managed to garner the affection of any woman. "'How,' they said, 'would you have these two men with thee have wives? Ours would not live with them, for they have hair all over their faces and we have none there or elsewhere.' " ¹¹

Disgust was not universal, however. Late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century reporters among the Huron and Ottawa at Detroit and Michilimackinac, and among the Illinois tribes to the west, announced that the native women liked "the French better than their own Countrymen," that they liked all men "very much," and "especially the French," and that "they always prefer a Frenchman for a husband to a savage whatever." ¹²

Such contradictory female attitudes may be attributed perhaps to cultural differences among Great Lakes peoples and to the length and quality of these groups' contact with Europeans. But women from the same kin group, tribe, or region also diverged in their opinions, ambitions, and behavior. Within the tribal setting, forgetting for a moment the complicating factor of white intervention, were women who hewed closely to role models established by tradition as properly womanly and normal, and those -- such as celibates, medicine women, female hunters, warriors, and concubineswho adopted atypical roles.

Acculturation to European ways, moreover, was not a generalized process which affected all tribes or bands evenly. Some groups were more resistant to change than others, just as some individuals were more likely than others to respond positively to external appeals or to new opportunities. Thus, while certain European influences may have worked to persuade Indian women to adopt alien customs and beliefs, there were also tribally based sanctions and precedents for extraordinary female behavior. Possibly the small number of Great Lakes women who were inspired to deviate from traditional female roles at home were interchangeable with those who, when placed in a contact situation, proved most susceptible to innovation and change, however destructive such change might prove to be for tribal society as a whole.

The native wives and consorts of fur traders did not, anymore than their

partners, comprise a single interest group, or share a common background. They nonetheless possessed qualities akin to those of medicine and warrior women that transcended tribal differences and set them apart from the traditional female majority. Marriage to a white stranger -- a being initially viewed as an other-than-human person with unknown, hence unpredictable, powers -- was a frightening life adventure for which tribally reared women received no preparation. It confounded the imagination of all but the stronghearted.

If Indian women who married Europeans were unusual, what were the prescribed roles for late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Great Lakes women? The paucity of data pertaining to American Indian women of this period and the difficulties in comparing members of dissimilar cultural and linguistic groups (Siouan, Iroquoian, and Algonkian speakers) make generalizations tentative indeed. For the most part, I will focus upon Algonkianspeaking Illinois-Miami, Ottawa, and Ojibwa women, for whom fairly detailed observer accounts exist. These data have been enhanced by the collected oral traditions and insights of anthropologists such as Ruth Landes, Frances Densmore, Inez Hilger, A. Irving Hallowell, Paul Radin, Mary Black Rogers, Beatrice Medicine, and Raymond DeMallie, Jr., whose work among western Great Lakes tribal peoples and the Dakota have been consulted. ¹³

Despite variations in the degree of freedom allowed female adolescents in the Great Lakes region, ranging from open sex play among courting Huron youth to an emphasis upon premarital chastity and modesty among Dakota and Illinois girls, all females were reared with one end in view: to behave in such a way as to enjoy a long, healthy life free of misfortune. That meant, among Algonkian and Dakota speakers, to behave as became a good woman, i.e., as faithful wife and devoted mother. Women's sphere encompassed the cornfield and lodge, the immediate kin group, and, where applicable, the clan or ritual sodality. While along with her brothers she was taught in childhood to fast in order to communicate with "dream visitors" who were the "source of assistance...in the daily round of life, and besides this, of 'blessings,' " powerful female visions or dreams bestowing extraordinary gifts were not regarded as vital. Women's usual dream visitors, Antoine Denis Raudot reported, were "lesser spirits," those who taught women how to make themselves irresistable, or to succeed in marriage, child-bearing, and the domestic arts. In contrast, men dreamed as if their lives and the life of the community depended upon it. The group could not survive, it was believed, without the help of important other-than-human persons or spiritual allies in the male occupations of hunting, warfare, governance, and religious prediction and intervention. ¹⁴

The female vision quest was nonetheless the most significant event of a young girl's life, coinciding as it often did with the passage into womanhood and eligibility for marriage. It occurred at or prior to menarche, or when girls were about thirteen to fifteen years of age. With the onset of a girl's first menses, she was secluded in a special hut or corner of the longhouse away from the eyes of all but her closest kinswomen and other menstruating girls. During this time, when a woman was regarded as spiritually potent (and threatening to male power), she fasted or cooked only for herself. When her menses ceased and she was purified, the new-born woman returned to her family and a new fire was kindled in the lodge. She was thereafter regarded as marriageable by men who stood in the proper kinship relationship to her and could call her "sweetheart." ¹⁵