5 “Le Fond de l’Ouest” Territoriality, Oral Geographies, and the Métis in the Nineteenth-Century Northwest Étienne Rivard Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. T he emergence and development of the Métis Nation in the nineteenth-century Canadian northwest has drawn much attention over the years and deeply shaped Canadian imagination. The Métis “rebellions” of 1870 and 1885, the creation of the province of Manitoba in 1870, and the emblematic character of Louis Riel figure even more predominantly in Canada’s imagination for they profoundly marked the colonial history of the country. Since the late 1960s, this rather “classic,” or “colonial,” stance on history has been challenged by two major changes that have brought to the forefront Métis perspectives and voice. The first one lies with increasing Métis involvement in academic research, including individual scholarship as well as editing (les Éditions Bois-Brûlés or the Pemmican Press), and in institutions such as the Gabriel Dumont Institute. The second change has to do with the expanded use of oral material— narratives, songs, or in-depth interviews are just a few examples1—which has demonstrated that oral traditions are fundamental to Métis social– cultural reality. This shift to a more Métis-centered viewpoint certainly enhances our knowledge of Prairie Métis history, particularly with regard to its organization, its materiality (tools, means of transportation, food, clothing, housing), and its cultural distinctiveness. 143 <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 144 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE In this chapter, my goal is to provide a geographical reading of oral material by asking what it reveals about nineteenth-century Prairie Métis territoriality and oral geographies. The first section scrutinizes four individual narratives and some collective narratives in order to portray Métis territoriality (or Métis sense of identity and place). Although these narratives represent only a fraction of the available oral material,2 they nonetheless draw a fairly rich and diverse portrait of Prairie Métis identity and territorial reality. The second part of the chapter focuses on Métis place names and how they expose oral geographies, or, put another way, the close relationship between orality and territoriality. Ultimately, inbetweenness, spatial mobility, and oral culture itself may well be considered to be forming la toile de fond,3 the backdrop, against which Métis relation to land and identity stands. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Métis Territoriality: The Intermingling of Identities and Places Broadly defined, territoriality refers to a people’s relationship to a specific and delineated geographical area, or, as the geographer Robert D. Sack would have it, “how people use the land, how they organize themselves in space, and how they give meaning to place.”4 This definition emphasizes the material, political, and symbolic dimensions of territoriality. The concept of territorialité is more often described as the relationships between a people’s sense of identity and their sense of place. Thus defined, territoriality is not simply an existing sociospatial structure, but also an ongoing reality. Territoriality is both the process by which a people appropriate space and create territory through their identity markers and the process by which they redefine, at least partially, their identity and sense of belonging in relation to that territory. “Otherness”—interaction with “others” or institutional structures, for example—constitutes the backbone of such a territorial and identity process.5 In this section, I rely largely on the memoirs of four individuals: Louis Goulet, Peter Erasmus, Norbert Welsh, and Antoine Vermette. Even though most were born at Red River at about the same period, all four lived distinct lives and, as their respective narratives suggest, had specific views of Métis identity and territorial reality. Whereas Louis Goulet, Antoine Vermette, and Norbert Welsh clearly self-identified as Métis, Peter Erasmus’s sense of identity is only indirectly suggested. Their sense of identity heavily <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 145 depended on their distinct ethno-linguistic and religious backgrounds. Goulet and Vermette were Catholic French; Erasmus, whose Danish father worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), was Protestant and spoke English. Welsh kept strong links with his English origin, though he mostly adopted the religion of his French Métis mother and in-laws. Erasmus (1833– 1931) had considered becoming an Anglican priest and had been teacher for some time before he was hired by the Canadian government as an interpreter in the treaty process. Goulet principally pursued his family’s trading and freighting activities, but he also became a scout for the U.S. Army. Welsh divided his time between his trading activities, the buffalo hunts—he and his family followed the last of the buffalo to the Cypress Hills—and farming. In other words, although these Métis individuals all performed roughly the same activities in the Northwest and went through the same events (colonization, depletion of the buffalo herds, the uprisings of 1870 and 1885), they also made sense of these activities and events in their own ways. On the other hand, and paradoxically, these individual narratives also reveal a relatively narrow collective view. If they offer a fairly good glance at the diversity of roles played by Métis males on the plains—as traders, freighters, buffalo hunters, or interpreters—they seem to overlook many other parts of Métis life. All these men shared a similar set of socioeconomic activities that only partially account for being Métis in le NordOuest. None was a full-time farmer, fur trade employee, or fisherman, but they were all mostly involved in the free trade and buffalo hunt. Except for Goulet’s description of the voyageurs’ old brigading songs6 and Erasmus’s mention of the “most hazardous experiences of the north country,”7 there are but a few observations from Métis about their involvement in the fur trade.8 Although it is true that a great proportion of the Métis in the nineteenth century hunted buffalo and lived at Rivière-Rouge (Red River, in present-day Manitoba), the parkland–woodland environment, fur trade routes, and proximity of the posts were also important components of Métis sense of place.9 In a similar manner, and despite the fact that at times they account for the role played by women on the Plains, these narratives are likely to convey some gender bias.10 Identity Mobility and a Discourse of In-Betweenness A few elements stand out in these narratives. One is a sense of “inbetweenness,” which has the Métis as neither Indian nor European, but <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 146 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE partly both. Prairie Métis consciousness of their so-called in-between condition likely emerged because they were occupying a very specific socioeconomic niche within the Northwest economy, one where their role as intermediaries was an asset.11 At first sight, Métis individuals’ accounts draw on very specific cultural lines, making clear-cut distinctions between Métis and the “other,” either Indian or Euro-American. In Goulet’s memoirs, Indians are frequently depicted as those mauvais chiens (dirty dogs) or enemies who can never be trusted.12 Following is what he claimed in his comparison of Métis and Indian horses: Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. In our day we used to call the Metis’ horses cayuses and the Indians’ broncos. . . . There were more fine animals, proportionately, among the cayuses than the broncos. The big difference between the two, besides their physique, was that the cayuse was like a dog; you always knew pretty well what you had on your hands, whereas the bronco was like an Indian; you couldn’t trust him until you’d known him for a while.13 Welsh also suggested at times the “primitive” nature of Indians, portraying them as superstitious or ignorant.14 His memoirs offer other illustrations of the differences between Métis and Indians; for example, he explained that Métis traders occasionally performed Indian dances and songs mainly as a matter of good business and sociability, implying that it had nothing to do with their common cultural practices.15 The Métis’ urge to distinguish themselves from their Indian forebears is also conveyed by their collective narratives. Métis consciousness arises, in no small part, from their collective battle for land and for control over the buffalo, also a necessary resource for many Indian tribes.16 The Métis’ need to protect themselves from potential Indian attacks, particularly from the Sioux, is depicted in the Métis story of the “Sixty Seven BoisBrûlés.”17 According to this story, which likely refers to the 1851 battle of Grand Coteau, the Bois-Brûlés are those courageous ancestors who once faced 2,000 Sioux warriors, defending themselves and their right to use the land. The story also emphasizes the age of this event—“only the prairie wind is left to know,” when the Bois-Brûlés were already a distinct people and they left “home” with “nine hundred carts” travelling “the ox-cart trail.” The spirit of this story is that the Métis should be proud of their glorious past, of what they are, and of the land from <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 147 which they originate. There could hardly be a better way to feed collective feelings. These narratives also clearly distinguish the Métis from les Anglais and les Américains (or the “Yankees,” as Welsh would have it). As the socalled newcomers became more influential and modified the geography of the Northwest, they were often depicted as those who troubled the quietude of the old days— or, as Goulet would have it, as “the devil . . . in the woodpile.”18 Euro-Canadians were generally depicted as being hardly suited to survive on the prairie, ill-adapted to this vast wilderness. Hiding from the sight of some Canadian troops during the 1885 uprising, Goulet said, “We’d have been goners if they hadn’t been White men!”19 meaning that if these men had been Indians or Métis, Goulet and his friends would have been detected. Norbert Welsh’s few comments about the pointlessness of possessing a watch to tell the time on the prairie was another way that the Métis distanced themselves from Euro-Canadians and EuroAmericans.20 Another illustration of such a separation is found in Welsh’s critique of Yankee hunters, who, he claimed, “shot more buffalo for their hides than all the Indian and half-breed hunters put together.”21 Collective narratives can also emphasize the distinction between Métis and Euro-Canadians. On the evening of June 19, 1816, Pierre Falcon composed “La Chanson de la Grenouillère,” a song that described an event of the same day that came to be known as the “Battle of Seven Oaks,” the other name for the “Frog Plain” in Rivière-Rouge. This song is much more than an objective description of a fight that took place in a specific site at a given time. It is a call for Métis mobilization against the “outsider” and a claim for Métis collective sovereignty over the land. Falcon’s song drew definite ethnic boundaries between Métis and “outsiders.” The Bois-Brûlés were not to be confused with les Anglais or les prisonniers des Arkanys (Orkneymen who worked for the HBC). That they were also employees of the fur trade and that the companies were also important actors in the making of Rivière-Rouge was ignored. The song became a de facto national anthem during the uprising of 1870, reinforcing its use as a vehicle of Métis distinctiveness. “Chanson de la Grenouillère”22 1: Voulez-vous écouter chanter / Une chanson de vérité? / Le dix-neuf de juin la bande des Bois-Brûlés / Sont arrivés comme de braves guerriers. <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 148 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. 2: En arrivant à la Grenouillère / Nous avons pris trois prisonniers / Trois prisonniers des Arkanys / Qui sont ici pour piller notre pays. 3: Étant sur le point de débarquer / Deux de nos gens se sont mis à crier / Deux de nos gens se sont mis à crier / Voilà l’Anglais qui vient nous attaquer! 4: Tout aussitôt nous avons deviré, / Nous avons été les rencontrer / J’avons cerné la bande de grenadiers / [Ils] sont immobiles, ils sont démontés. 5: J’avons agi comme des gens d’honneur / J’avons envoyé un ambassadeur / “Le Gouverneur, voulez-vous arrêter / Un petit moment, nous voulons vous parler?” 6: Le Gouverneur qui était enragé / Il dit à ses soldats: “Tirez!” / Le premier coup, c’est l’Anglais qu’a tiré / L’ambassadeur a manqué tuer. 7: Le Gouverneur qui se croit empereur / Il veut agir avec rigueur / Le Gouverneur qui se croit empereur / À son malheur, agit trop de rigueur. 8: Ayant vu passer tous ces Bois-Brûlés / Il a parti pour les épouvanter / Étant parti pour les épouvanter / Il s’est trompé, il s’est fait tuer. 9: Il s’est trompé, il s’est fait tuer / Une quantité de ses grenadiers / J’avons tué presque tout son armée / Rien que quatre ou cinq ça l’ont pu se sauver. 10: Si vous aviez vu tous ces Anglais / Tous ces Bois-Brûlés après / De butte en butte, les Anglais culbutaient / Les Bois-Brûlés lâchaient des cris de joie! However, a closer look at these narratives indicates some permeability in the Métis process of separating themselves from the Other. The narratives were not exclusively constructed on differences from Others but, rather, also on mediation and dialogue. They amalgamated diverse voices23 and moved between two cultures, making Métis identity exceedingly mobile. Métis individuals seemed to borrow, alternately, the way of thinking of both Indians and Euro-Canadians and build their own sense of identity through a double looping movement between divergence and convergence. Sometimes they spoke the voice of their Euro-Canadian ancestors, such as Goulet and Erasmus labeling Indians as “savages.” Sometimes they thought the way of their Indian forebears, showing sympathy for them and being critical of Euro-Canadian behaviors and ideologies.24 This is what happened when Louis Goulet described one of his fellows, William Gladu , as a “métis sauvage,”25 for although Goulet did not completely reject the colonial ideology of primitive people, he challenged it somewhat by showing Métis potential for occasional savageness. Peter Erasmus experienced similar in-between situations as he had to make sense of the opposition between his enjoyable life with Woodland and <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 149 Prairie Indians and a more settled life achieved by the advance of colonization. He also had to face the discordance between Indian and EuroCanadian beliefs. In addition to the “conflict between Indian mysticism and Protestant rationalism”26 experienced by Erasmus was the antagonism between scientific (i.e., European) and Indian medicines. In spite of his initial doubts with regard to Indian medicines,27 Erasmus was later “convinced that [his old friend and Methodist minister, Rev. Woolsey] could have been saved his present misery if he had not been prejudiced against Indian medicines.”28 Norbert Welsh’s memoirs offer another example of this in-between condition. Although he emphasized the strangeness of Indian camps, he also described in great detail how he set a tent for and by himself in the Indian way.29 It would be misleading to think that the Métis experience of inbetweenness was completely unconscious. Indeed, it made Métis successful intermediaries between Indians and Euro-Canadians, a role that most of the narrators performed and were often pleased to play.30 This role is likely what Welsh had in mind when he displayed his linguistic skills: “I spoke to [the Indian] in Cree, asking where he had come from, and what he wanted. He shook his head and answered in Assiniboine that he did not understand Cree. We then talked in Assiniboine.”31 Welsh’s account is filled with similar comments that bring to light his knowledge of English, French, and many Indian languages.32 This intermediary role led the Métis to consider themselves indispensable. “Many of the early famous travellers,” Erasmus said, “would have been hopelessly lost, starved, or frozen to death without the guidance and advice of the Indians and halfbreeds.”33 Reading Goulet’s narrative, it seems that in-betweenness became, over the years, the focus of Métis political awareness and distinctiveness. Quoting Charles Nolin, who spoke at the meeting in 1884 that decided that a party would be sent to Montana to bring Louis Riel to the Northwest, Goulet mentioned that “the problem with us Metis right now is that we’re like a cart with only one wheel. If we want to get moving, we’ll have to go find the other one we need, in Montana, beside the Missouri.”34 Nolin referred to the cart as a metaphor for Métis sociopolitical reality, one made of both Indian (filled by Gabriel Dumont, the “child of the plains”) and Euro- Canadian (the literate Louis Riel, the missing wheel) origins. For Nolin, there was only one way for the Métis to resist the advance of colonization and the Dominion of Canada—to mobilize a cart that contained the two essential components of their identity. Nolin’s <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 150 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE comment demonstrated that Métis in-betweenness was not just ambivalence and mobility, but also collective consciousness and a sense of distinctiveness. Indeed, Goulet, Erasmus, and Welsh were not ambiguous when they referred, indirectly or not, to their in-betweenness. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Spatial Mobility and the Extended Territoriality of the Métis Along with in-betweenness, spatial mobility was another central component of Métis territorial experience in the nineteenth-century Northwest. Despite their importance in Métis life, settlements were not continuously inhabited, for many Métis would leave them, often for years. Settlements were points of both departure and arrival. There were elements of a broader network of places dispersed over the prairie, which included winter camps or hunting areas. Métis mobility was the backbone of this network. It was what connected all these places together. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Métis created a socioeconomically diverse array of settlements across the Northwest. They were generally located in the parkland—Lac Sainte-Anne, Lac La Biche, Île-àla- Crosse (where fishing, trapping, and hunting activities were dominant), but also Saint-Albert, Petite-Ville, and Batoche—and at the proximity of numerous wooded hills scattered over the grassland (the montagnes de Bois, de Cyprès, de l’Orignal). Rivière-Rouge was, however, the dominant Métis settlement. Métis individual accounts contain many references to the material (or economical) importance of Rivière-Rouge, notably about its agricultural activity. Louis Goulet explained that la rivière aux Marais (west of today’s Dufrost) was where the Métis used to “faire du foin” (make hay). He also told how the tourtes (a type of pigeon), known as pests among farmers, made the settlement difficult for agriculture.35 Norbert Welsh also mentioned the importance of la Rivière-Rouge when he recalled, “Long ago, near Fort Garry there were a lot of farmers along the Red River. They were rich farmers, although they had small farms.”36 Besides these comments about agriculture, there were other indications of the material reality of Rivière-Rouge, as illustrated by Goulet’s mention of the durability of the Métis log houses—the Charette house built in the rivière Sale settlement (which later became known as the Saint-Norbert parish) in 1800 was still standing when Goulet told his story.37 <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 151 The material life of other settlements was described in similar ways. For example, Welsh, along with Father Hugonard, was the first to farm in Fort Qu’appelle in 1878.38 Later still, in 1884, he started ranching in Prairie Ronde (about sixty miles south of Batoche) and provided a good idea of Métis land tenure: “It was now the beginning of September [1884]. I had brought my plow and harness, so I broke three acres of land that could be used for potato and vegetable garden in the spring. The plowing marked my claim. Nobody else would take it. That was the law of the country.”39 Métis accounts also provide a sense of the importance of settlements in Métis community life. Describing the moral importance of Father Ritchot, Goulet emphasized the central role of the Catholic Church.40 Indeed, churches and religious figures regulated most of the central activities of community life in settlements—marriages, baptisms, funerals, and masses. The churches also affected patterns of settlement when they divided territory into parishes of specific religious adherence.41 Furthermore, Goulet stated that newcomers from Ontario in the 1850s affected the Red River communities, recalling his father’s sense of loss for the “feeling of unity and friendship that had always been felt among those people of different races and religions.”42 In the same vein, Erasmus recorded the words of his family’s neighbor and friend of Red River, the Scot Murdoch Spence, who lamented the quietude of the old days of the community before they were compromised by a young French Métis “agitator” named Louis Riel.43 Because of the prairie’s importance in their economic life and development, the Métis spent a considerable part of their lives there. It is no surprise that the Welshes delivered their own baby on the plains in the mid-1860s while trading at Prairie Ronde.44 According to Goulet, the “unsettled” prairie also greatly affected Métis elders’ sense of territory and identity: Those days of my childhood and adolescence were so beautiful, I wouldn’t hesitate to say they were the most exciting years in all Metis history (with the stress on Metchiff). We had the virgin prairie, with all the buffalo we could use, and no competition from the Indians since they were pacified. The old-timers who’d lived through the old days and the wars on the prairies were still with us.45 Goulet’s words described the plains as “virgin,” as if there had only been Métis living on and from it. Indian competition for the land was depicted <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 152 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. as something that belonged to the past. Similarly, the numerous fur trade posts scattered across the parkland and grassland seemed to have had little significance for Métis elders, for they were not even mentioned. If many consider the prairie to be limited to grassland, a distinct landscape mostly of low-prairie vegetation (grasses, wild flowers, or mosses), and exclude the parkland, known as the ecological transition between grassland and woodland, the Métis narratives do not often make these distinctions. From the Métis narratives under scrutiny here, “prairie” was defined as wherever the buffalo were. Some species of bison, such as the wood bison, occupied both parkland and woodland zones.46 Even the plains bison, the most economically significant type of bison, which generally ranged within the grassland, was often chased up to Edmonton, in the parkland, by Métis hunters.47 The buffalo was basic to Métis geography, as illustrated by Louis Goulet’s description of the different species of bison hunted by the Métis, or by the numerous hunt expeditions Vermette, Welsh, and Erasmus participated in during their lives.48 Although the hunt itself reached its peak in the 1840s, the importance of the buffalo-robe trade to St. Paul grew during that period in terms of both the number of carts involved and the value.49 Although seasonal, the buffalo hunt nevertheless occupied the Métis for much of the year. Antoine Vermette reported that there were no fewer than three buffalo seasons: summer, fall, and winter.50 Goulet provided further detail of how the buffalo hunt organized Métis life and geography: We usually left for the prairie early in spring, as soon as the grass was long enough for grazing—nippable, as we used to say. We would come back around the month of July, stay at the house one, two or three weeks and leave again, not to return this time until late in autumn. Sometimes we even spent the winter on the prairies. That’s what we used to call wintering-over, in a tent, a cabin or a makeshift house built on the plain. Normally we went to Wood Mountain, but when the buffalo drew back into the area of the Cypress Hills, we followed them. Finally, later on, when they took refuge in the rough country of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado, it was along the Missouri River we went to find the few remaining herds.51 The buffalo hunt affected not only broad geographical movements, but also more specific spatial patterns, such as organization of the camps. If Métis individuals often slept outside simply, with only a blanket,52 the <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 153 settling of a buffalo-hunting brigade camp was generally a far more complex matter: Some caravan leaders had a habit of forming a circle at every stop so that the people would get used to the manoeuvre and learn with practice how to do it quickly. Former la ronde meant to place the carts parallel, side by side, wheel to wheel, in a line, with the shafts lifted in the air so that the carts tipped backwards and rested on their rear bottom edge, forming a circular enclosure. . . . Thanks to this system, the camp could be instantly transformed into a fortress preparing its defenses.53 Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Goulet’s description of the camps as a circular distribution of carts for defensive purposes reveals the importance of both human geography on the plains and conflicts with Indians for available resources. The prairie was also the site of more permanent structures: the winter camps. These winter camps were generally situated near a river and a source of wood, and their construction demonstrated the Métis relation to land: The great majority of winter shacks were made of poplar, which was the most common wood in the forests of the upper Missouri. It was by far the most abundant tree and the easiest to work, but once it was squared and dried in the shade it could be as durable as oak. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those houses I saw built are still standing, especially the ones made of cedar or cypress.54 Norbert Welsh, a native of the Red River Settlement who traded all over the plains for most of his life, claimed, “in all I must have had about twenty wintering houses on the Saskatchewan plains.”55 The Métis experience of the prairie was also political. Although the Rivière-Rouge was the center of institutional organization in the Northwest for both Euro-Canadians and Métis, the prairie was not without political importance for the latter. As Welsh pointed out, “We fur traders had a law of our own in the North-West. Before we left the country we appointed a Chief officer and four sub-officers to police the trip.”56 In contrast to colonial organizations in the settlements—the Council of Assiniboia in Rivière-Rouge, the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, or the diverse religious orders—the hunting organization, often called le conseil des chasseurs, was a temporary and itinerant sociopolitical structure. The <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 154 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE Métis hunting council was meant to achieve specific tasks and be dissolved and reconstituted as needed. The power it exercised, its authoritative and coercive functions, disappeared once the hunt was over. However, the election of a new hunt council was fairly consistent and ongoing. Elections were called at specific meeting points, such as Pembina or near Beaver Lake, Alberta.57 The laws that regulated the hunting expedition and the hunt itself were another element. According to Vermette, “There was a law that you couldn’t shot cows after July 15, and if a man was found guilty of this he was fined by the chief of the party. They would also fine a man if he could not skin all he had killed.”58 Communal sharing of the meat and labor was another feature of buffalo-hunting expeditions.59 Moreover, the structure and function of le conseil des chasseurs eventually became the basis of the political organization of the new permanent settlements in the Batoche area in the 1870s and 1880s, even before such a political structure was used at Rivière-Rouge.60 Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. A Shifting Hierarchy of Places Métis spatial mobility underlined a persistent and paradoxical feeling— the excitement of departing for the “free life” of the plains, yet the heartbreak of leaving the settlements. Both Louis Goulet and Peter Erasmus expressed this feeling, as well as the pleasure of coming back to RivièreRouge after months of enjoying the prairie life.61 Such a mix of feelings conveys the complexity and depth of Métis relation to land. Contrary to colonial perspective, settlements were not the continuous core of Métis experience of place, and the prairie was not simply a peripheral region subordinate to settlements, a mere potential hinterland to be cultivated. The individual narratives under scrutiny reveal a fluctuating hierarchy of places, a spatial priority oscillating between settlement and prairie. Although some parts of the Métis narratives suggest a centrality of settlements, others suggest the lure of the “margins.” A similar conclusion can be drawn from collective oral narratives, such as the song “la Chanson de la Grenouillère” and the story “Sixty Seven Bois-Brûlés” mentioned above. Whereas the former depicts Rivière-Rouge as the home of the Métis, the latter portrays the prairie as the focal point of their experience of space. When Goulet referred to Rivière-Rouge (more specifically, the parish of Saint-Norbert) as “la maison” and “le pays natal,”62 or when he discussed <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 155 Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. how, in 1870, Louis Riel and the Métis prevented the Dominion from taking it over,63 he certainly centered the settlement in his narrative. Erasmus also wrote about Rivière-Rouge as “home.”64 And yet, most of Goulet’s and Erasmus’s memoirs focus on the prairie as vital to the Métis way of life, setting Métis settlements at the margins of their narratives. As a result of the buffalo hunts of his childhood,65 as well as his work as freighter and as a scout for the U.S. Army during his adult life, Goulet spent little time in Rivière-Rouge. More important, their descriptions of prairie life are deeply and sincerely positive, if not nostalgic, reflecting their specific attachment to that space. Erasmus was convinced that his attraction to the prairie life compromised his chance to marry Florence, a Métis woman from Lac Sainte-Anne: “Suddenly I realized that the real reason for doubt or hesitation in declaring my intentions was not actually the difference in religious adherence but in my own dislike for a settled existence and my love for travel.”66 The shared centrality of both settlements and the prairie was sometimes expressed through a rapid switch between the two, even on the same page of a narrative: Many a young love ending in happy marriage saw its first spark during one of those memorable journeys [toward wintering places]. It was the ideal time for a girl or a widow to pick a husband from the cream of the crop! . . . The communal, pastoral life we enjoyed all the way across the plains from Red River to Wood Mountain or the Cypress Hills or to the steep-cut banks of the Missouri River, went on even after the caravan had reached its destination [Red River]. Once there, we’d rest a few days and spend that time picking up again with old friends and relatives. Back then, family ties among the Metis could stretch to infinity, so to speak. If two grandfathers traded dogs one day, that was enough for their grandchildren to call themselves relatives. Children of cousins two or three times removed turned into uncles and aunts.67 This comment suggests that there was more than one specific center to Métis socialization. From Goulet’s perspective, Métis communal life was determined as much by the months of pastoral life spent in the prairie— where, he said, marriages occurred—as by life in Rivière-Rouge—where the extended family assumed its significance. <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 156 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Oral Geographies: Ground for a Primary Writing Orality—the condition of oral cultures or the state of reliance on oral traditions—provides much more than the evidence from which Métis territoriality can be examined. In fact, orality and territoriality are deeply interconnected. Memory is the cement that binds them. It thickens the experience of space by giving meaning to places, justifying collective and individual appropriation of space, and enhancing a sense of belonging to them. In spite of their great mobility, Métis behavior in space was socially structured. It often followed the prescriptions of elders, bearers of memory and knowledge about land and resources. Finding bison, berries, or firewood were all activities facilitated by landmarks and geographical knowledge and were expressions of Métis historical land use. Orality, memory, and territoriality (or, more broadly, spatiality) form the triad upon which are built oral geographies. The concept of oral geography has two main meanings. First, it can be defined as oral history— the historical and critical analysis of oral material—mediated through space or, more specifically, territory or landscape. Second, it represents the connection between spatial structures—the material, political, and symbolic orderings of space—and social structures (e.g., cultural practices, norms, or institutions) inherent to oral cultures. Among the studies addressing, explicitly or not, oral geographies,68 those that focus on place names are numerous.69 Such emphasis on toponyms is not surprising. For oral cultures, place naming represents more than simply a symbolic appropriation of space or the cultural dimension of territorialization. It constitutes a significant process of social–spatial production. As Julie Cruikshank notes of Athapaskan toponyms, they “are more than names; they are metaphors bringing together varieties of information in one small word.”70 Place names are mnemonic devices that follow and lead a narrator through a story.71 The mnemonic role of indigenous place names is reflected in the terse grammatical style in which these toponyms are composed. Toponyms are generally not precise geographical descriptions but, rather, are pictorial and summarized versions that act as guides for remembering and communicating.72 Globally, place names convey individual and collective memories, stories, the mythic baggage of a people, and geographical knowledge. Whereas naming is the result of a close time-related experience of the land, the passing <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 157 of these names from one generation to another is a means of communicating a people’s history and geography.73 Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Naming Is Knowing: Resources, Land Use, and Territorial Occupancy Métis toponyms are no different, hence our interest for the Prairie Métis toponymic nomenclature.74 The Métis-named landscape—which largely borrows from both Indian and Euro-Canadian names—is the text in which is recorded their historical land use. The descriptive and pictorial nature of Métis toponymy, in which place names are the mental presentations of the physical and human geography they name, provides a wealth of geographical information. Toponyms constitute a text that describes the physical geography of the prairie. First, they relate its broad topographical features. The prairie itself was described with names such as la Prairie Ronde (Saskatchewan) and la Prairie de la Tête de Bœuf (Calf Mountain area, Manitoba). The numerous hills where the Métis had a number of camp sites were descriptively named—la Montagne de l’Orignal (Moose Mountain), la Montagne de Cyprès (Cypress Hills), la Montagne de Bois (Wood Mountain), la Montagne Sale (Dirt Hills), and la Butte du Cheval Caille, la Butte au Carcajou, or la Butte du Foin de Senteur (Sweetgrass Hills). So are the coulées and rivers that incise the prairie, such as la Grande Coulée de la Grosse Butte, which derived “its name from a large conical hill about two hundred feet high.”75 Certain place names offered a precise description of land. La rivière aux Gratias (Morris River, Manitoba) recalled the presence of gratias, an old-French word for burdocks, also referred to by the name “Scratching River” on some nineteenth-century maps of the Red River area. Some other place names described available resources. La Talle de Hart-Rouge (Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan) is one example, as Métis used to fill their pipes with the bark of the red willow that grows in the region.76 The name la rivière aux Îles-de-Bois (Boyne River, Manitoba) is another illustration: along this river, only a few miles west of Rivière-Rouge, was a forest of oak where the Métis used to gather most of the wood they needed to build or repair their carts. The place named Tas d’Os (Regina, Saskatchewan) was where Métis gathered to make pemmican, and the name was derived from the accumulation of buffalo bones. In the 1880s, some Métis, especially those from la Montagne de Bois and La Talle de Saule, moved there to gather <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. 158 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE these bones (and those spread all over the prairie), which were then sent to the United States to be powdered and processed into fertilizer.77 Place names were also textual expressions of Métis experiences on the northern margins (the boreal forest and the parkland), lands often shared with the Canadiens, at the very heart of the fur trade geography. In Manitoba, there was les eaux-qui-remuent (series of portages near the mouth of Winnipeg River), la rivière de la Tête Ouverte (Brokenhead River), la rivière Bouleau, la rivière Blanche, and the upper section of la rivière au Rat. Northern Saskatchewan and Alberta featured places such as Lac La Biche, Lac La Ronge, Île à la Crosse, Portage La Loche (Methy Portage), Décharge du Rapide Croche (Crooked Rapids), Portage du Diable (Great Devil Rapids), Pointe au Sable (Sand Point), and Rapide du Genou (Knee Rapids). All these names, often descriptive, also highlighted a way of life distinct from the one on the plains. Rivers, lakes, rapids, and portages—all basic geographical components of the fur trade geography—were predominant features in Métis/Canadien toponymic nomenclature.78 Métis place names also referred to human geography, with toponyms such as Batoche, the place where Xavier Letendre dit Batoche had his ferry and store; la traverse à Gabriel (Gabriel’s Crossing), named after Métis leader Gabriel Dumont, who used to operate another ferry service; or la Fourche des Gros-Ventres (south branch of the Saskatchewan River), which referred to the upstream presence of “Big Belly” Indians.79 In a similar manner, la Coulée- Chapelle or la Coulée des Prêtres (Saint-Victor), in the vicinity of la Montagne de Bois, referred to the chapel built in the early 1870s to welcome the Oblate father Jean Lestanc, the first Roman Catholic priest to establish himself in the region. “Writing” Métis History Books: Names, Memory, and Spatial Mobility These examples highlight the relationship between place names, information about land, and Métis collective memory. Toponyms form, at the very least, a memory of land. To return to individual narratives, there is hardly a recollection or description that is not linked to specific place names. Describing a buffalo expedition, Louis Goulet explained, The old people wanted to go [to La Coquille Pilée, near present-day Whitewood in Saskatchewan] because it used to be a popular spot for wintering-over sixty or seventy years before. One year, a group of one <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 159 Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. hundred to one hundred and fifty Metis families from Red River were set up there for the winter, with a big camp of Cree Indians nearby. During the winter, the Cree camp was hit with a bad epidemic of smallpox. Dogs carried the germs of the terrible disease into the Metis’ winter camp, which was totally wiped out in a matter of days. There wasn’t even anybody to bury the dead who became carrion for wolves the rest of the winter and for crows in the spring.80 The hunting caravan did not head toward la Coquille Pilée for a material reason. Rather, the rationale for the detour, Goulet explained, was to remember those who had died there years ago. The example of la Coquille Pilée also stressed the thread that held together orality, memory, and relation to land, for it reveals one important element of Métis territoriality—spatial mobility. The elders’ will to reach this place showed that Prairie Métis were not a “wandering” people, as many nineteenth-century observers had it. Métis mobility was a spatial practice that was socially structured and based on a precise and wellestablished network of deliberately named places. The Métis-named landscape (or more broadly, the aboriginal-named landscape), and the geographical and historical knowledge it contained, had the capacity for guiding spatial mobility. The opposite was also true. Deflected from its original course, a party of Métis could be exposed to unknown or longunvisited lands. Such encounters could generate new historical and territorial experiences and feed Métis collective memory and their toponymic baggage. Les Mauvais Bois on the Assiniboine (near les Grands Rapides de l’Assiniboine, or today’s Brandon, Manitoba) is an illustration of how names could inscribe a specific event and unique experience of space into collective memory. Geologist and explorer Henry Youle Hind met this place and referred to it in his narrative of the Red River expedition: Leaving Prairie Portage on the morning of the 19th [June 1858], we took the trail leading to the Bad Woods, a name given to a wooded district about thirty miles long, by the buffalo hunters in 1852, who, in consequence of the floods of that year, could not pass to their crossing place at the Grand Rapids of the Assiniboine by the Plain or Prairie Road. There were four hundred carts in the band, and the hunters were compelled to cut a road through the forest of small aspens which forms the Bad Woods, to enable them to reach the high prairies. This labour occupied them several days, and will be long remembered in the <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 160 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE settlements in consequence of the misery entailed by the delay on the children and women.81 Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. An In-Between Geography of the Nord- Ouest: Naming Distinctiveness Métis place names were symbolic expressions of in-betweenness and identity mobility. If many derived from direct Métis experience, others originated from both Métis cultural backgrounds, Indian and EuroCanadian. This variability in naming exposes the duality of Métis collective memories, stories, and mythic baggage. It explains why toponyms of Native origin, such as the rivière Queue d’Oiseau, rivière Calumet, lac la Vieille, or Côteau des Festins lie alongside place names of Euro-Canadian extraction: (a) toponyms like Portage-la-Prairie, derived from the Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye’s exploration expeditions of the 1730s and 1740s; (b) toponyms shared with the voyageurs, such as la fourche des Gros-Ventres or la rivière du Pas (north branch of the Saskatchewan River); and (c) hagionyms (names with religious meaning) brought to the Northwest by missionaries, such as Saint-Boniface, Saint-Norbert, Saint-Anne, Saint-Vital, and Saint-Albert. The Métis did more than translate Native place names into French (or Mitchif ), they often integrated the original stories associated with these names. La Prairie du Cheval Blanc (White Horse Plain, today Saint-François-Xavier, on the Assiniboine River in Manitoba) is one example. The general belief is that the name comes from Indians and is related to a story of a mysterious and unapproachable horse. Although he agrees that the name comes from an Indian story, Elliot Coues suggests that the story is also rooted in Métis oral tradition.82 If la Prairie du Cheval Blanc is a name whose meaning borrows from Indians, it also finds its form in Euro-Canadian language, thus adding another dimension to the in-betweenness of Métis naming. In addition to this general picture, there are more specific indications of the in-between reality of Métis naming. One is the coexistence of multiple names for the same place. Again, la Prairie du Cheval Blanc is a good example. This Native place name was used for a while in parallel with the hagionym Saint-François-Xavier (1850s) as well as another “official” toponym, Grantown, named after Cuthbert Grant. Fond du Lac/ Saint-Laurent (1861) and Prairie à Fournier/Baie-Saint-Paul (1834) in Manitoba, Batoche/Saint-Laurent de Grandin in Saskatchewan, and Lac des Esprits (1830)/Lac-Sainte-Anne (1850) in Alberta are other eloquent examples. It is <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 161 not surprising that the appearance of church names in existing Native/ Métis-named land coincided with the spread of missions in the Northwest and was mostly initiated by the priests (symbolizing, to some extent, the importance of the church and priests). Louis Goulet, Peter Erasmus, and Norbert Welsh, notably, used both Indian–Métis names and hagionyms, often interchangeably. However, in many cases, the earlier Métis name was eventually replaced by the church name, indicating an important shift in the power of naming. Such a substitution process developed at a rapid pace after the creation of the province of Manitoba in 1870. Many Métis dispersed to far corners of le Nord-Ouest and were often replaced by newly arrived French Canadian settlers. La Pointe-à- Grouette, which became Sainte-Agathe in 1876; la Pointe- Coupée, renamed Saint-Adolphe at about the same period; or Rivière- aux-Rats (Saint-Pierre and, later, Saint-Pierre-Jolys) are good illustrations. In a sense, these church names erased, at least symbolically, the Métis presence. In other cases, amalgamation was the norm, the Métis name only partially covert. Such amalgamation is how la Coulée des Loups was “christianized” to become Sainte-Anne-de-la-Peau-du-Loup (before it was changed to Sainte-Anne-du-Loup, and finally Wolseley in Saskatchewan), a name that assimilated the “savage” into the patroness of the voyageur. A similar argument can be made for Pointe- des- Chênes in Manitoba, which became Sainte-Anne- des- Chênes. Despite representing the shifting power of naming in the late nineteenth-century Northwest, these amalgamations or hybrid names nevertheless suggest the preeminence of the Métis geo-cultural layer in the region and the difficulty in simply erasing it from land and memories. Conclusion Métis oral culture expressed the diversity of meanings contained in Louis Goulet’s phrase “le fond de l’Ouest.”83 This phrase suggests how extended, diverse, and rich Métis territoriality was. The individual narratives analyzed in the first section depict a far-reaching Métis experience of space, both socially and spatially. This space was composed of a vast array of places scattered over the whole Northwest, with different places coming to the vanguard of importance at different times, depending on life contingencies, seasonal activities, and spatial mobility. Like this shifting Métis hierarchy of places, Métis sense of in-betweenness, <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. 162 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE which frames the extent of the mobility of their identity and their intermediary role in the Northwest, also conveys the diversity of Métis territoriality. As revealed by the investigation of Métis place names, spatial mobility and in-betweenness represented the “bottom line” (or le fond de l’histoire) of the Métis sense of territory and identity—what is buried under the surface. Given the descriptive nature of place names and their importance to oral tradition, they prove to be an excellent source of geographical information, historical land use, and collective memory. Along with the landscape they describe, toponyms are, in many respects, the Métis history book. And as such, they constitute a window into the interaction between territoriality and orality, or oral geographies. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Notes 1. Cass-Beggs, Seven Metis Songs of Saskatchewan; Jannetta, “ ‘Travels through forbidden geography’ ”; and Payment, “Les gens libres— Otipemisiwak.” 2. Some of the individual narratives were, in fact, written by their literate Métis authors. Nonetheless, they often suggest the importance of the Métis oral culture, revealing at times collective narratives and songs. For example, see Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 65; Dempsey, “Foreword,” p. x; and Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 25. For a more extensive use of Métis oral material, see Rivard, “Prairie and Québec Métis Territoriality,” 86–124. 3. Hence the use of Louis Goulet’s phrase—“Le fond de l’Ouest”—as the chapter title (see Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 78). My use of this phrase likely carries more meanings than Louis Goulet intended. For the Métis, le Fond de l’Ouest was merely a geographical reference; it would translate as “the far west.” 4. Sack, Human Territoriality, 2. 5. Raffestin, Pour une géographie du pouvoir, 145. 6. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 65. 7. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 63. 8. As an explanation, I would suggest that the “free life of the prairie” in the early twentieth century, when all these accounts were recorded, was much more gratifying to Métis storytellers (as opposed to the contemporary sociospatial marginalization that they faced) and much more “romantic” and “exotic” to interviewers. 9. Tough, “As Their Natural Resources Fail.” 10. One might as well mention a possible “translation” bias. These “oral” accounts had to be recorded on paper, most often by non-Métis, which meant losing the true way of speaking of the Métis in the process. The great efforts made by the publisher of Goulet’s memoirs to keep alive the spirit of the Métis elder’s <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 163 speech should not hide the fact that it was written in standard French, not in its original French-Métis language. Moreover, most of these recollections were performed years after the events described (late nineteenth century). Louis Goulet was in his seventies when Charette interviewed him, and Norbert Welsh was eighty-seven in 1931 when he told his life to Mary Weekes. The men’s age when interviewed might explain their stories’ rather nostalgic tone regarding the “free life of the prairie,” particularly given that this way of life was long gone. 11. Foster, “Some Questions and Perspectives.” 12. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 16, 17, and 146. The translated excerpts provided here are, for the most part, from the English version of the narrative. See Charette, Vanishing Spaces. 13. “De notre temps, l’on appelait les chevaux des Métis cayousses et ceux des Indiens, broncos . . . La proportion des bonnes bêtes était plus forte chez les cayousses que chez les broncos. La grande différence entre les deux, en dehors de leur physique était que le cayousse ressemblait au chien: vous saviez à peu près toujours ce que vous aviez dans vos mains, tandis que le bronco, c’était comme un sauvage, vous ne pouviez pas vous y fier avant de l’avoir connu” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 97). 14. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 17, 44. 15. Ibid., 47. 16. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 206, 227, 231. 17. One may find this story in Sealey’s Stories of the Métis, 90– 93. The author attributes this story to “the era of Louis Riel.” I am not aware of any French version. According to Norbert Welsh’s account, the remembrance of this event had been important for the Métis (Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 161). 18. “Le diable . . . dans la cabane” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 77). 19. “Si ce n’eût pas été des blancs, ça y était!” (ibid., 174). 20. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 20, 40. 21. Ibid., 43. 22. Quoted from Complin, “Pierre Falcon’s ‘Chanson de la Grenouillere,’ ” 49–50. Please see pp. 107–109 in chapter 3 for an English translation of the song lyrics. 23. Jannetta, “ ‘Travels through forbidden geography,’ ” 65. 24. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 201. 25. The métis sauvage expression was found in the transcripts of Charette’s original manuscript notes in the Provincial Archives of Manitoba (MG9A6, folio 112). The editor has preferred the term métis indien. If this last term efficiently shakes the distinction between Métis and Indians, it does not carry the colonial ideology that the original expression implies. That said, the French term sauvage was used in the nineteenth century as a general expression, just like “Indian” in English at the same period or “aboriginal” today. It was not meant to be as pejorative as “savage.” 26. Spry, “Introduction,” p. xxviii. 27. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 154. 28. Ibid., 171. <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. 164 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE 29. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 10–11. 30. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 146, 150; Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 239– 64; and Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 84, 107. 31. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 15. 32. Ibid., 84. 33. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 75. 34. “La question métisse . . . est comme une charrette. Pour la faire marcher il faut deux roues et, dans le moment, il nous en manque une. Si nous la voulons, il nous faut aller la chercher dans le Montana, le long du Missouri” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 137). 35. Ibid., 24, 51. 36. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 119. 37. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 59. 38. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 119. 39. Ibid., 144 (emphasis added). 40. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 90– 93. 41. The Roman Catholic Church was the most important religious institution. It was established in the region in 1818 by Father Jean-Norbert Provencher in response to Lord Selkirk’s and the Métis’ expressed demands. 42. “[L’]esprit d’union et de camaraderie qui avait toujours existé chez les gens d’origines raciales et de religions différentes” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 77). 43. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 140, 191. 44. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 35. 45. “ces années de mon enfance et de mon adolescence ont été si belles! je n’hésite pas à dire qu’elles ont été les plus enivrantes de toute notre histoire à nous Métis, avec l’accent, Métifs. Nous avions la prairie vierge où il y avait encore assez de buffalos pour nous suffire, et les Indiens pacifiés n’étaient plus là pour la disputer. Nous avions avec nous tous les anciens qui avaient vécu le temps de la prairie et de ses guerres” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 60). 46. Ibid., 36. 47. Ibid., 78. 48. Ibid., 36–37. 49. Ens, Homeland to Hinterland, 80. 50. Manitoba Free Press, “Antoine Vermette,” 26 August 1910. 51. “Nous avions coutume de partir de bon printemps pour la prairie, dès que l’herbe était assez longue pour être broutée, pour la pincer, comme on disait. Nous revenions vers le mois de juillet. Nous restions à la maison pendant une, deux ou trois semaines pour repartir et ne revenir cette fois que tard à l’automne, quand nous ne passions pas l’hiver dans la prairie. C’est ce que nous appelions passer l’hiver en hivernement, sous la tente, dans une loge ou dans une maison d’occasion construite sur la plaine. Nous allions ordinairement à la montagne de Bois; quand le buffalo recula du côté des environs de la montagne Cyprès, nous l’y suivîmes. Enfin, plus tard, lorsque le buffalo se réfugia dans les terrains <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 165 difficiles d’accès du Montana, du Wyoming, du Nebraska et du Colorado, ce fut le long du Missouri que nous allions à la rencontre des troupeaux qui restaient encore” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 32). 52. Ibid., 177; Manitoba Free Press, “Antoine Vermette,” 15; and Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter. 53. “Certains chefs de caravane avaient l’habitude de former le rond à chaque arrêt afin d’habituer les gens à cette manœuvre et d’en acquérir la rapidité à force d’exercice. On appelait former le rond, placer les charrettes parallèlement à côté l’une de l’autre, roue à roue, puis lever les timons en l’air de façon à asseoir la charrette sur sa fonçure d’arrière et présenter ainsi une clôture circulaire. . . . Grâce à ce système le camp pouvait se mettre immédiatement en état de siège et préparer sa défense” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 40). 54. “La grande majorité des maisons d’hivernement étaient construites de liard, qui était l’essence la plus commune des forêts du haut Missouri. C’était de beaucoup l’arbre le plus abondant et le plus facile à travailler, mais une fois qu’il avait été équarri, puis mis à sécher à l’ombre il valait le chêne comme durée. Alors, je ne serais pas étonné qu’il y eût encore de ces maisons que j’avais vu construire. Surtout parmi celles qui étaient d’épinette rouge ou de cyprès. (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 59). 55. Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 96. 56. Ibid., 24. 57. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 200. 58. Manitoba Free Press, “Antoine Vermette,” 15. 59. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 183, 229; and Weekes, Last Buffalo Hunter, 20. 60. Payment, Batoche (1870–1910), 95. 61. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 77; and Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 141. 62. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 32, 45, 95, 113. 63. Ibid., 89. 64. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 14. 65. Goulet’s family once spent over two years away from Rivière-Rouge. 66. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 61. 67. “C’était au cours des ces voyages mémorables [toward wintering places] que s’allumaient les amours qui aboutissaient à d’heureux mariages. C’était la belle occasion pour les filles et les veuves de se trouver un mari choisi sur la crème de toute la race! . . . La vie pastorale en commun au cours de la traversée des plaines depuis la Rivière-Rouge aux montagnes de Bois, de Cyprès, ou aux bords escarpés du Missouri se continuait même après que la caravane eût atteint sa destination [RivièreRouge]. Un repos de quelques jours succédait à notre arrivée et nous en profitions pour retrouver des connaissances ou de la parenté. C’était le temps où les liens de parenté chez les Métis s’étiraient pour ainsi dire à l’infini. Il suffisait à des grandspères d’avoir une fois échangé des chiens pour que leurs petits-enfants se considèrent comme des parents. Ceux issus des cousins de deuxième et troisième degré redevenaient des oncles et des tantes” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 61). <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. 166 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE 68. See, e.g., Hewitt, “ ‘When the Great Planes Came’ ”; and Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick. 69. See, e.g., Aporta, “Trail as Home”; Collignon, Les Inuit; Fair, “Inupiat Naming and Community History”; and Pearce, “Native Mapping.” 70. Cruikshank, “Getting the Words Right,” 63. 71. Fair, “Inupiat Naming and Community History,” 473. 72. Pearce, “Native Mapping,” 159– 60. 73. Cruikshank, “Getting the Words Right,” 63; Linklater, “Footprints of Wasahkacahk”; Ray, I Have Lived Here since the World Began, 1; and Rivard, “Territorialité métisse,” 26–27. 74. In addition to the individual memoirs analyzed in the first section, and otherwise specified, the principal sources for this toponymy analysis are as follows: Coues, New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest; Geographic Board of Canada, Place-Names of Manitoba; Hind, Narrative of the Canadian Red River; Léonard, “Une toponymie voilée”; Létourneau, Henri Létourneau raconte; Morice, L’Église catholique; Rondeau, La Montagne de Bois; and Taché, Esquisse sur le nord- ouest de l’Amérique. 75. Hind, Narrative of the Canadian Red River, 1:18. 76. Rondeau, La Montagne de Bois, 104. 77. Ibid., 112. 78. Léonard, “Une toponymie voilée”; and Rivard, “Territorialité métisse.” 79. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 84. 80. “Les vieux tenaient à passer par [la Coquille Pilée], parce qu’il y a soixante ou soixante-quinze ans c’était un lieu populaire d’hivernement. Une année, un groupe de cent à cent cinquante familles métisses de la Rivière-Rouge s’y étaient installées pour hiverner. A côté, se trouvait un gros camp d’Indiens cris qui fut attaqué durant l’hiver par une forte épidémie de grosse picote. Des chiens transportèrent des germes de la terrible maladie dans le camp d’hivernement métis, ce qui le décima totalement dans l’espace de quelques jours. Pas un seul Métis ne s’en réchappa. Il n’y resta même personne pour donner la sépulture aux victimes, qui devinrent la pâture des loups pour le reste de l’hiver, et des corneilles au printemps” (Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 79). 81. Hind, Narrative of the Canadian Red River, 1:283–84. 82. Coues, New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest, 1:288. 83. Charette, L’espace de Louis Goulet, 78. Works Cited Aporta, Claudio. “The Trail as Home: Inuit and Their Pan-Arctic Network of Routes.” Human Ecology 37, no. 2 (2009): 131–46. Cass-Beggs, Barbara. Seven Metis Songs of Saskatchewan, with an Introduction on the Historical Background of the Metis. Don Mills, ON: BMI Canada, 2009. Charette, Guillaume. L’espace de Louis Goulet. Winnipeg, MB: Bois-Brûlés, 1976. <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. MÉTIS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NORTHWEST 167 ———. Vanishing Spaces (Memoirs of a Prairie Métis). Translated by Ray Ellenwood. Winnipeg, MB: Bois-Brûlés, 1980. Collignon, Béatrice. Les Inuit, ce qu’ils savent du territoire. Paris, France: L’Harmattan, 1996. Complin, Margaret. “Pierre Falcon’s ‘Chanson de la Grenouillere.’ ” Proceedings and Transactions, Royal Society of Canada vol. 33, no. 2 (1939): 49–58. Coues, Elliott, ed. New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest: The Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Fur Trader of the Northwest Company and of David Thompson, Official Geographer of the Same Company 1799–1814. . . . 3 vols. New York, NY: F. P. Harper, 1897. Cruikshank, Julie. “Getting the Words Right: Perspectives on Naming and Places in Athapaskan Oral History.” Arctic Anthropology 27, no. 1 (1990): 52– 65. Dempsey, Hugh. “Foreword.” In Buffalo Days and Nights (as told by Henry Thompson). Calgary, AB: Fifth House, 1999. Ens, Gerhard J. Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Metis in the Nineteenth Century. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto, 1996. Erasmus, Peter. Buffalo Days and Nights (as told by Henry Thompson). Calgary, AB: Fifth House, 1999. Fair, Susan W. “Inupiat Naming and Community History: The Tapqaq and Saniniq Coasts near Shishmaref, Alaska.” Professional Geographer 49, no. 4 (1997): 466– 80. Foster, John E. “Some Questions and Perspectives on the Problem of Métis Roots.” In The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America, edited by Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer S. H. Brown, 73– 91. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1985. Geographic Board of Canada. Place-Names of Manitoba. Ottawa, ON: Department of the Interior, 1933. Hewitt, Kenneth. “ ‘When the Great Planes Came and Made Ashes of our City . . .’ Towards an Oral Geography of the Disasters of War.” Antipode 26, no. 1 (1994): 1–34. Hind, Henry Youle. Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857 and of the Assinniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858. 2 vols. London, UK: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1860. Jannetta, Armando E. “ ‘Travels through forbidden geography’: Métis Trappers and Traders Louis Goulet and Ted Trindell.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 25, no. 2 (1994): 59–74. Léonard, Carol. “Une toponymie voilée: Problématique des noms de lieux particulière à une minorité canadienne, la Fransaskoisie.” PhD dissertation, Département de géographie, Université Laval, QC, 2005. Létourneau, Henri. Henri Létourneau raconte. Winnipeg, MB: Bois-Brûlés, 1980. Linklater, Eva Mary Mina. “The Footprints of Wasahkacahk: The Churchill River Diversion Project and Destruction of the Nelson House Cree Historical Landscape.” Master’s thesis, Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, BC, 1994. <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16. Copyright © 2012. University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. 168 CONTOURS OF A PEOPLE Lytwyn, Victor P. Muskekowuck Athinuwick: Original People of the Great Swampy Land. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2002. Manitoba Free Press. “Antoine Vermette, Red River Pioneer, Tells of Manitoba’s Buffalo.” August 26, 1910. Morice, A. G., o.m.i. L’Église catholique dans l’Ouest canadien: Du lac Supérieur au Pacifique (1659–1905). 3 vols. Winnipeg, MB, 1912. Payment, Diane P. Batoche (1870–1910). Saint-Boniface, MB: Éditions du Blé, 1983. ———. “Les gens libres— Otipemisiwak”: Batoche, Saskatchewan 1870–1930. Ottawa, ON: Parks Canada, 1990. Pearce, Margaret Wickens. “Native Mapping in Southern New England Indian Deeds.” In Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use, edited by Malcolm G. Lewis, 157–86. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Raffestin, Claude. Pour une géographie du pouvoir. Paris, France: litec, 1980. Ray, Arthur J. I Have Lived Here since the World Began: An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People. Toronto, ON: Lester Publishing Limited & Key Porter Books, 1996. ———. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto, 1998. Rivard, Étienne. “Prairie and Québec Métis Territoriality: Interstices territoriales and the Cartography of In-Between Identity.” PhD diss., Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 2004. ———. “Territorialité métisse dans le Nord- Ouest canadien au xixe siècle: exploration cartographique et toponymique.” Cahiers franco- canadiens de l’Ouest 14, nos. 1–2 (2002): 7–32. Rondeau, Clovis, Rév. La Montagne de Bois (Willow Bunch Sask): Histoire de la Saskatchewan méridionale. Quebec, QC: L’Action Sociale, 1923. Sack, Robert David. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Sealey, Bruce D. Stories of the Metis. Winnipeg: Manitoba Metis Federation, 1975. Spry, Irene M. “Introduction.” In Buffalo Days and Nights (as told by Henry Thompson), pp. ix–xxxii. Calgary, AB: Fifth House, 1999. St- Onge, Nicole. Saint-Laurent, Manitoba: Evolving Me¥tis Identities, 1850–1914. Regina, SK: Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, 2004. Taché, Alexandre A. Esquisse sur le nord- ouest de l’Amérique. Montréal, QC: Typographie du Noveau Monde, 1869. Tough, Frank. “As Their Natural Resources Fail”: Native Peoples and the Economic History of Northern Manitoba, 1870–1930. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1996. Weekes, Mary. The Last Buffalo Hunter (as told to her by Norbert Welsh). Saskatoon, SK: Fifth House, 1994. <i>Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History</i>, edited by Nicole St-Onge, et al., University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=3571331. Created from umanitoba on 2019-10-06 16:55:16.