METIS

In preparation for a chapter I’m writing for a book about the East Slope of the Rockies, I’m reading up on the metis, the mixed people who took refuge in the deep valleys and still persist. Of course, a while back I read Joseph Kinsey Howard’s “Strange Empire” and knew he had a cabin up one of those valleys. But there is a long and complex background that is being explored by academics recently.

Not long ago I reviewed Heather Devine’s book, “The People Who Owned Themselves” but now I have three more recent books of scholarship:

“We Know Who We Are: Metis Identity in a Montana Community” by Martha Harroun Foster (2006, U of Oklahoma Press)

“The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America,” essays edited by Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer S. H. Brown for the Manitoba Studies in Native History (1985, University of Manitoba, which is my father’s alma mater.) This anthology includes an essay by Sylvia Van Kirk (“What if Mama Is an Indian?”) who is the author of “Many Tender Ties,” an exploration of mixed Indian/white marriage. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to call it a beloved book.

“One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader,” essays edited by C.L. Higham and Robert Thacker. (2004, University of Calgary Press) This is a little oblique, but it is a good account of the turmoil along the 49th parallel that is the basis of what is called “ethnogenesis,” the creation of a new people.

Since so much of the world is still in the throes of “ethnogenesis,” the subject seems lively and relevant to a lot of people. Remarkably, the world of the Red River metis formed, was crushed (in that Middle Eastern sort of way), and now persists, partly as a diaspora and partly as a heritage. Sometimes even a place. Perhaps some of the strength and resilience of these people comes from being founded on binaries in tension, the original binary being the white Euros coming onto the North American continent -- particularly to create and maintain the fur trade. Here follows a list.

French men who began a voyageurs in the East, marrying into Iroquois.

High class educated British who came as managers to run forts.

Working class (think Orkneys) tough men who went into the field as lower echelon direct contact with tribes.

So: French v. British; educated gentry v. tough working men; two languages spoken; and, as time went on, a split between fur hunters and buffalo hunters which meant two different habitats requiring different strategies; a split (over time) between “wintering” or even living year-round in frontier communities v. following the buffalo herds where they went; a split in the delivery system depending on access to water, so carts v. steamboats; and a split between the Catholics who traveled with their own priest and the Protestants who had to choose again between Scots Presbyterian and the Anglican, but usually in the context of a town with a church.

For descendants one of the most salient splits was between men who married “in the fashion of the country” but respected that as much as formal marriage in their country of origin v. men who simply abandoned their Indian or mixed wives and children in order to return to their previous lives. (Sometimes creating double families, like the Conrad for whom my county seat is named.) Over time there came to be enough children of “mixed blood” to supply maturing youngsters with mixed spouses.

Each mixed person or household could make a choice: would they identify as Indian (which tribe?) or would they identify with the father and become white? Some fathers pushed their children towards assimilation by providing better housing, clothing, education. At one point the Hudson’s Bay Company and the American fur companies were both run by privileged mixed blood men.

Once the Canadian prairie stopped being either Rupert’s Land (an ambiguous frontier country) or Hudson’s Bay Company’s specific franchise, authorities had to decide what to do about the mixed people. In the end the Metis managed to make the case that they were a special group, neither Indian nor white. Once the 49th parallel was drawn and differences in culture began to form because of immigration and politics, the US Metis were forced to choose whether they were Indian or white. Some of them ended up in limbo, denied citizenship, possibly deported to Canada. What was at stake was government support with confinement on reservations versus a stigmatized version of white that allowed the freedom of deep poverty. There were two ways to invite trouble: be an Indian and not be an Indian.

On top of this, when the Canadian metis tried to form an independent sovereignty in two separate rebellions, the survivors fled across the border to Montana. Again, some assimilated and some formed small groups. All of them maintained a nomad’s understanding of pathways and connections among the little settlements. It would be hard to find a better illustration of Deleuzeguattarian ideas of human relationship and development.

There is another interesting binary: most white Euro men will trace families through the men and their surnames, but for the Metis the women are the relationship establishers and maintainers. This is most strongly marked in the Metis books by women, especially Devine, Foster and Van Kirk. They are simply another version of women everywhere, dressed in long black dresses with black shawls over their heads, who sit together doing handwork and sorting out who married whom, which baby came first, and how the in-laws were related via sibling marriages. I’ve heard rez women and country women do this many times. I had not thought of the system of “god-parents” who might be white and therefore a great aid in a prejudiced world. Pulling them into the family was an excellent strategy, increasing the number of “tender ties” that has always been the essence of community.

I sometimes think about what I call “tomorrow’s people” on the West Coast: Latino/Asian/American Indian people. In the east and elsewhere there is an informal category that defines itself as “brown,” neither black nor white and often including many East Indians with the same sort of Brit overseer mix -- no French, I guess. Maybe. In Africa . . . I would not venture to guess.