The Second National Resistance
The Métis Nation was conceived in a cry for freedom. That core value has never left the national identity. It underlies everything the Métis value and everything they did. They believed themselves free to use the lands and resources of the North-West, and they very much wanted to be free of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
By the 1830s and ’40s, the North-West was awash with talk of responsible government, equality, liberty and freedom, ideas that flowed over the ocean from France, north from the Americans and east from Lower Canada. The ideas coming from Lower Canada included a pushback against “Anglifying the country.” This phrase, coined by Joseph Papineau in 1822, expressed the French belief that despite their majority numbers in Lower Canada, Anglification would result in the loss of everything they held dear—their laws, religion, language, institutions and customs.
The Métis wholeheartedly embraced the ideas of Papineau and the Patriotes, and it’s easy to see why. Their circumstances were virtually identical. Both were denied meaningful participation in the institutions of power. In Lower Canada there was an elected assembly, but a council of English elites appointed by Britain held all the real power. If there had been responsible government in Lower Canada, the French would have had much more power. In the North-West the Métis elected their own governments in their winter camps and on their hunts. But there was nothing resembling responsible or representative government in Red River. Governance in Red River was in the hands of a corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Company and its appointed Council of Assiniboia. If there had been responsible government in Red River, the majority Métis would have had more power.
Louis Riel’s father, Jean-Louis, was an ardent Papineau supporter and Patriote. He was in Lower Canada, mourning the death of his first wife, during the turmoil that eventually concluded in the Rebellions of 1837–38. Before his wife died, he had been living in Rainy Lake. On his return to the North-West, he went to Red River. Jean-Louis Riel became one of the major agitators fighting against the Company rule in Red River. The goals of the Lower Canada Patriotes so resonated with the Métis Nation that they flew the Papineau standard and sang the Patriotes’ songs for many years.
The British demonstrated no inclination to share power with the French in Lower Canada, and the Company followed suit with the Métis in the North-West. In Lower Canada, Lord Durham produced a report in which he recommended that the British assimilate the French as quickly as possible. According to Durham, the French Canadians were an inferior race with no literature or history. In Red River the Hudson’s Bay Company appointed one of the Durham Report’s authors, Adam Thom, to a judicial post in the newly created office of “Recorder of Rupert’s Land and President of the Red River Court.” Thom was a lawyer, a former newspaper editor in Montreal, and an assistant commissioner on the Durham Report. He had called for the state to execute all 750 Patriotes arrested following the Papineau Rebellion. The French-Canadian press branded Thom as a hateful fanatic.
This man, Adam Thom, who didn’t speak French and wanted a mass execution of hundreds of French Catholics, was the man Simpson appointed as the first judge in Red River, where the majority of the population was French-Catholic. The Métis hated him on sight. They saw him as a hanging judge, a paid employee of the Company who served at its pleasure. As Métis trader Peter Garrioch said, Thom was a “judge for the sole benefit of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”1 The Métis expected Thom to “have a special eye to his employer’s interest, above that of all others.”2 He more than met their expectations.
THE WANING OF CUTHBERT GRANT’S LEADERSHIP
In 1835, after the Selkirk family sold its land back to the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Company reorganized its governance system and created the Council of Assiniboia. The appointed councillors, other than three local clergymen, were all Company men. Cuthbert Grant was appointed to the council, which further tarnished his reputation among the French Métis. The younger generation of Métis were cynical of Grant’s role on the council and described him as a “mute and neutral Under Chairman.”3
But there was much more to Grant than his participation on the Council of Assiniboia and his role as Warden of the Plains. In his own community of Grantown and out on the Plains, Grant was highly respected as a doctor. According to his descendants he acquired his medical training during a visit to Britain in 1822 to 1823. His medical skills were much in demand as a succession of diseases—influenza, mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles, smallpox and cholera—ravaged the North-West between 1830 and 1850. Influenza epidemics occurred six times within that twenty-year period.4 The largest toll was on the women, because they were the main caregivers, and on the children and elderly, because they were the most vulnerable.
In 1842 to 1843, a whooping cough epidemic in Red River was immediately followed by scarlet fever. The diseases spread rapidly and almost every family was affected. Over one hundred people died of scarlet fever, most of them children. The outbreak was followed by another fever in 1844, and many more died from the unnamed scourge. Mortality rates from the measles epidemic of 1846–47 were very high, and complications from the disease added to the heavy loss of life. In 1846 in Red River, three epidemics hit in quick succession—influenza, measles and cholera. The community was devastated. The “bloody flux,” following shortly after influenza and measles, carried off one-sixth of the population of Grantown. Beginning in January and lasting well into the autumn, disease took about seven people every day and 321 in all. Alexander Ross, a prominent citizen of Red River at the time, said there was “hardly anything to be seen but the dead on their way to their last home; nothing to be heard but the tolling of bells, nothing talked of but the sick, the dying, and the dead.”5 Two-thirds of them were Métis. The deaths had a demoralizing effect on the Métis society, which contributed to the tensions in the North-West during the 1830s to 60s.
Grant the doctor was a Métis hero. But increasingly, Grant the loyal Company man came to be seen by a new generation of Métis as a sellout. More and more the younger generation turned away from Grant’s leadership and began to follow the lead of two young educated Métis, Jean-Louis Riel and James Sinclair. It was Riel and Sinclair who now led the growing resistance of the Métis against the rule imposed by the Hudson’s Bay Company.
This was the situation in the North-West when the Hudson’s Bay Company sought to double down on its moral, legal and economic authority. But when death stalks the land, deference to any authority other than the grim reaper is hard to come by.
CHAFING UNDER COMPANY RULE
The Company, like most corporations, operated within an established hierarchy populated by two main groups: masters and servants. The masters were the owners, partners and managers. The servants were the employees, who worked at the pleasure of their masters. The system rewarded those who provided the most profits, those who displayed open and continuous loyalty to the Company, and those who were ambitious to advance within the corporation. The system punished those who were seen as disloyal, interested in personal profit, resistant to following orders or unconcerned whether the Company prospered or not. The reward and punishment system is not a bad way to govern a corporation, but it was poor governance for those who were not employees or servants and who had the misfortune of trying to make a living in the same geographic territory as the Company.
To put it simply, the Hudson’s Bay Company governed Rupert’s Land as a corporate despot and it harvested the predictable results of its tyranny. Observers at the time had no difficulty in putting their finger on the problem. Alexander Ross wrote, “so long as the courts and council are the haunts of favourites and sinecurists, to the exclusion of others . . . a thorough change in the administration of justice . . . [is] imperiously demanded; and the Hudson’s Bay Company would be well advised to look to it.”6 Peter Erasmus, a famous Métis trader and interpreter, wrote in the 1850s that he hated the “autocratic power which some of the officials used to assert their authority.”7
The Company provided no forum for discussion and debate about its laws, policies or rules. It ruled as an autocrat and as if the North-West in the first part of the nineteenth century were ignorant of the democratic values of liberty, equality and responsible government. The Company ruled the North-West with blinkers on, its systems built on its belief in its own moral and intellectual superiority, but also on fear that largely arose as an awareness of its vulnerability. As Sir George Simpson noted in his opening speech to the first meeting of the Council of Assiniboia, “we have not the means at command of enforcing obedience and . . . it must be evident to one and all of you.”8 Anyone who questioned Company rule—generally the Métis—was considered disloyal and rebellious. When challenged, the Company pointed to its charter, and when that didn’t work, issued orders. The Métis, as we saw in the events that led up to the battle at the Frog Plain, did not react well to arbitrary orders.
By the 1830s the Métis Nation had created its own successful lifestyle. The English Métis became more agrarian and settled into the Protestant parishes in Red River. Many still participated in the buffalo hunts, but these Métis increasingly became farmers. The French Métis were more committed to the lifestyle of the buffalo hunt. They remained more mobile and formed the bulk of the Métis Nation’s Plains hunters.
The colony was largely dependent on the Métis hunters for its food and safety, and the Métis, not unreasonably, expected some respect for the crucial role they played. Instead they were looked down on. Everyone wanted the Métis to change. Everyone portrayed the Métis as improvident, irrational, lazy idlers. The clergy wanted to change them into Christian farmers. The Company wanted them to be loyal servants, to provide provisions only in the exact amount the Company required and then to go away and not bother the righteous settlers. In truth the colony was happy that most Métis were absent for much of the year; it made it easier for the colonists to sustain their belief in the moral superiority of their agrarian society.
The Bay men may have been good businessmen but they were terrible governors. Macdonell, the first governor of Red River, was incompetent to say the least. As the legal historian Dale Gibson has noted, Macdonell enjoyed a “hedonistic existence in the company of cronies and sycophants.”9 He was also “despised and held in contempt by every person connected with the place . . . accused of partiality, dishonest, untruth, drunkenness, in short, a total dereliction of every moral and honourable feeling.”10 The Company replaced him with a series of equally autocratic, incompetent or corrupt governors.
The Company governors and most of its senior staff were British, mostly Protestants who were educated in England. They governed based on imported English law, custom and values. Under its 1670 charter the Company asserted ownership and law-making powers over everything in Rupert’s Land—the land, the resources and the people. Decisions about Rupert’s Land were made far away at Company headquarters in London and then handed down as proclamations to the First Nations and the Métis Nation. Company officers were parachuted into Red River, many for short terms. These officers gave their loyalty to the Company and the British Crown.
The Company rules, under which the Métis Nation was forced to live and trade, made no sense geographically, economically or socially. The Company had never achieved the social licence with the Métis that the Nor’Westers had enjoyed. Because it was so unloved, it had little political capital to spend. It hoarded that capital and spent it against the Métis, a people the Company in equal parts needed and felt threatened by. The Métis Nation chafed under the weight of Company rule, which took little notice or consideration of the Métis customs, traditions or practices. The Company believed the Métis were tools to further its and the settlers’ ambitions. It regarded this as natural and essential to its well-being.
A NEW GENERATION OF MÉTIS NATION LEADERS
The Métis began to resist. In 1834 a Company officer seriously injured a Métis man named Antoine Larocque when he struck him over the head with a poker. Larocque’s offence was insolence for requesting his wages in advance of a trip, which was a common practice. Within hours of a bleeding Larocque appealing to the Métis community, Métis surrounded Fort Garry and began to sing their war songs and dance their war dances. They demanded the officer be delivered up to them to face justice according to their laws. The matter was only settled after hours of negotiations. The Company agreed to pay Larocque his wages without him having to work the trip. He also got a keg of rum and some tobacco.
In 1835 the Métis protested about food shortages and were successful in loosening the Company stores. The divergence of views in this case again reflected the different values of the two main parties. The Métis understood themselves to be the primary food provider of the colony, and in this assessment they were correct. As such, they saw nothing inappropriate in asking for some food back when they were in need. With their hunter’s ethic they expected those who worked with them on the hunt, including the Company, their partner, to share.
The Company saw it differently. They asserted ownership over everything in the country, including the buffalo. From the Company’s perspective it paid the Métis to hunt its animals and to bring its meat back to Red River. The Métis believed that if anyone owned the land and resources, it was the “Natives,” by which they meant the First Nations and the Métis Nation. The Métis perspective was that they were hunting buffalo freely available to them as Natives of the country and then selling the meat and hides to the Company.
Other than the Company’s bold declaration of ownership, there was little on the ground to reinforce the Company’s claims. The Métis and First Nations went wherever they wanted. They hunted for their own needs when and where they chose. They provided the meat, furs and robes the Company based its business on. The colony was dependent on the Métis for most of its food. Nothing in this demonstrated Company ownership of any kind.
The Métis and the Company had a financial relationship based on credit. But credit is a two-way street. Both sides needed each other to make the system work. The Company extended credit. In exchange Métis hunters provided meat, fur and hides. When they brought their provisions to the Company post, they traded for other goods, such as tea, sugar, clothing, etc. The Métis saw this trading system as partners who were sharing. In part this is why they believed that credit, or sharing, should be extended when the hunt failed.
The Company was oblivious to what the Métis would have seen as its sharing obligation. The fight to get the Company to share food in times of deprivation added to the cultural divide. The Métis saw the Company’s behaviour as shameful. Hoarding food broke the bond of obligation in the relationship they had long established. The two sides simply did not understand each other. From the Métis perspective the Company took, demanded and invoked loyalty at its own convenience but gave nothing back.
The fight to get the Company to loosen its stores to feed the hungry fed a growing tension between the Company and the Métis. The Métis presented a list of demands to Governor Simpson, and while they did not obtain all their goals, they did succeed in getting the Company to pay a better price for pemmican. With this small victory the Métis quieted, for the time being. Gaining some advantage with the Company eased the political tensions for the moment but did nothing to address the root of the problem, which was the Company’s attitude to the Métis. The Métis continued to resent the Company’s attitude and the Company continued its autocracy.
Winning a series of small victories made the Métis very conscious of their own strength. They knew Company rule depended on them. The Company knew it too. Throughout the 1830s and 40s, the Métis continued to press their advantage with periodic shows of protest that flared up and died out. Their resistance should not have surprised the Company. After all, it had been relying on the Métis since its earliest days. The Métis were the colony’s protection against the Sioux as well as being its main providers of buffalo meat. Both of these tasks required the Métis to keep their fighting attitude and skills well honed. They were a virtual army, and an army is always a double-edged sword. It must be kept sharpened to be of any use, but it also must be kept firmly pointed in the right direction. The Company had some influence, but not enough to keep the Métis aligned with their interests. The Métis obeyed their own inclinations.
Describing the situation in Lower Canada, Lord Durham said it was a “world of misconceptions, in which each party was set against the other not only by diversity of feelings and opinions, but by an actual belief in an utterly different set of facts.”11 The situation in Red River was identical. The misconceptions did nothing to mellow the relationship between the Company, the settlers and the Métis. Every experience in the history of the Métis Nation had reinforced the use of resistance as a means of obtaining their wants and needs. Collisions between the ruling English and the Métis now became a matter of course.
The Company raised its levies. Métis protests forced them to back down. The Company began to demand exorbitant prices for milling their wheat. The Métis forced them to construct a new mill among the French Métis. In 1836 the Company sentenced Louis St. Denis to be flogged for the crime of exporting furs without a Company export licence. The Métis organized a rescue too late. St. Denis was flogged in public, but Métis outrage forced the man who carried out the flogging to flee. The Company learned not to flog in public.
A Métis brigade crew went on strike and refused to make a second trip to York Factory. The Company managed to settle the strike by negotiation and eventually gave in to many of the demands. Cuthbert Grant, probably the one person who could prevent future strikes, was dispatched from then on to accompany the boats and keep the peace.
In the early 1840s the Company began to search Métis carts and even their homes for contraband furs. If furs were found they were forfeited to the Company. The search of Régis Larante’s home and the seizure of his furs riled the entire Métis population. Furs were also seized from the homes of other Métis. One man’s furs were seized, his house burned, and he was taken to York Factory, where he was threatened with deportation to England, a threat that would have been doubly insulting given that he was not English. But the seizures were premature. The Company could not prove the furs were actually contraband since they had not been taken out of Canada or sold to anyone. These orders were subsequently overturned, and the accused were indemnified by the Company’s head office in England. The seizures succeeded in uniting the Freemen and the Métis, whether of French or English extraction; all now stood together against the Company.
The Company declared that no furs could be used in the country or sent out of the country unless they were purchased from the Company. Then in 1844 the Company demanded a declaration about the provenance of the furs and gave themselves a lien on the goods should the declaration prove to be false. The declaration read as follows:
I hereby declare that since the 8th day of December instant I have neither directly nor indirectly trafficked in furs on my own account, nor given goods on credit, or advanced money to such as may be generally suspected of trafficking in furs; moreover, if before the middle of August next I shall appear to have acted contrary to any part of this declaration, I hereby agree that the Hudson’s Bay Company shall be entitled either to detain my imports of next season at York Factory for a whole year, or to purchase them at the original cost of the goods alone.
When the Company tried to prosecute an American trader who had married into the Red River community, over 150 Métis gathered to discuss possible action against Judge Thom, whom they believed to be biased against the Métis.
Requests by Métis traders, such as James Sinclair, to work with the Company on supporting fledgling businesses were met with silence. When the Council of Assiniboia attempted to prosecute a Métis woman for theft, Jean-Louis Riel went to Governor Andrew Colville to object to the participation of Judge Thom in the prosecution. His prejudice against the Métis was obvious to all in Red River, and the Métis were determined to keep him from inflicting his biases on Métis accused. The magistrates, fearing a row with the Métis, abandoned the prosecution. When a young English Métis, William Hallett, sought to marry the daughter of the chief factor of the Company, he was reprimanded for even dreaming of marrying a girl so far out of his social class. Hallett was a leading young man of the English Métis, and they took his rejection as a collective insult.
Governor Simpson was not unaware of the animosity, and in 1857 he wrote, “The whole of the population of the Red River, with very rare exceptions, is unfavourable to us.”12 He was right. The entire population of Red River wanted to be out from under the Company’s rigid control. The warning signs from the Métis Nation had been manifesting for decades. And others also warned the Company that it was “useless to attempt keeping things as they were 100 years ago.”13
The buffalo also undermined the Company’s efforts at rigid control. The herds were most often south of the border and the Métis followed the herds. The hunters kept their meat, but they often sold the robes, tongues and some pemmican in Pembina before they went home. In this way the Métis evaded the Company monopoly and traded with the Americans. The Company sporadically attempted to enforce its charter, but as Governor Simpson noted, “The Company’s rights are treated . . . as fictions of law which we cannot and dare not attempt to enforce, and in our present position this is correct.”14
The younger generation of Métis was not at all interested in obeying Company rules. They openly derided the Company men. Peter Garrioch called the chief factor James Bird an “old fool” and commented that if he “waits till people go to him, he’d better drink more strong tea, to keep . . . awake.”15 By 1846 the derision was also directed at Cuthbert Grant. It was said that no Métis jury would have convicted an accused man if he attempted to kill Grant.
In 1845 the Company passed a resolution that imposed even more restrictions on exports, rescinded any of the licences the Company had previously issued and put an immediate halt to any intermediary traders by declaring that it would purchase only from the actual hunters of the furs. The resolution was aimed squarely at Métis traders and hunters.
The Métis drafted a petition. They wanted their rights set out clearly in black and white so the Company could not continue to make up the rules. The petition read, “Having . . . a strong belief that we, as natives of this country . . . have the right to hunt furs in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s territories wherever we think proper and again sell those furs to the highest bidder, likewise having a doubt that natives of this country can be prevented from trading and trafficking with one another . . .”16 The Métis were stating their belief that, as “natives of this country,” they had a right to hunt and sell furs in the North-West, and they included a list of fourteen questions seeking further nuance to the Company’s declaration. Twenty-three Métis and Freemen signed the petition.
Governor Alexander Christie began his response by noting he was deigning to answer the petition even though it was unusual for rulers to answer legal inquiries outside the courts. But in Red River there was no forum for resolution of grievances against the Company. The Company proclaimed law one day, rescinded the next, exercised arbitrary authority, and then sat on its privilege. Sometimes it condescended to respond, making sure its subjects knew they were to be duly grateful for the condescension. The governor’s response to the petition can be briefly summed up as no, the Métis have no rights as natives of the country. The response did little to calm the waters in Red River. The Métis continued to demand freedom from the Company’s monopoly, and James Sinclair was particularly vocal in his opposition.
Father Belcourt persuaded the Métis to make a list of their grievances and send them to London. They reluctantly agreed. Their reluctance stemmed from a deep cynicism. They simply did not believe headquarters in London would respond any differently than its servants in Red River had. They also worried, correctly as it turned out, that the petition would only stir the Company to further acts of tyranny and reprisal. Sinclair drafted the petition, dated June 1, 1846, and carried it to England, where A. K. Isbister, a Red River Métis lawyer now living in London, presented it. The petition sought free trade, a governor independent of the Company, and an elected legislature. The petition carried the signatures of 977 Métis.17
The Company acknowledged that the Métis were born in the country and entitled to call themselves “Native,” but denied that this carried any rights or privileges. Isbister acknowledged a distinction between Métis and Indians but asserted that the distinction did not mean the Métis had no Native rights. The Company simply reasserted its position: the Métis were fully subject to Company laws. The Company put the petition down to outside agitators who were using the Métis to attack the monopoly through the mask of Métis rights. Despite the educated Métis—Grant, Riel, Garrioch, Sinclair and Isbister—the Company could not believe the Métis were capable of coming up with articulate opposition to its rule.
The British government considered sending out commissioners to investigate, but Sinclair and Isbister were probably thoroughly justified in rejecting this proposal. The Métis believed the Company would prejudice any investigators sent out to Red River. In the end the secretary of state for the colonies advised Isbister that it was a matter for the courts, where, by the way, the Métis would not be permitted to challenge the company charter or its monopoly.
In Red River, retaliation followed. James Sinclair, Jean-Louis Riel and Father Belcourt had made themselves too prominent in their protests on behalf of the Métis. Governor Christie informed Sinclair that henceforth Company ships would carry no goods in his name. Sinclair’s export business, at least the part that exported to Great Britain, was ruined. Father Belcourt was forced to leave Red River. Retaliation against Jean-Louis Riel continued for the rest of his life. Despite being one of the few educated Métis in the settlement, he was never given a place on the Council of Assiniboia or any official participation in the established government of the colony. He had simply made himself too vocal and active in protecting Métis.
Thus a pattern was established. The Company passed laws to restrain the Métis. The Métis complained and evaded the restraints. The Company tried to enforce its laws. The Métis petitioned. The Company would concede a few points in one area and double down in another. The Métis anger and resentment boiled over, and they resorted to collective, sometimes violent, opposition. The Company would back down and make concessions. Things would settle down for a while. This cycle repeated itself from the 1820s to the 1860s. The Company did not take advantage of any of these potential learning moments, and the Métis Nation further coalesced around a growing self-respect for its own ability to command compliance by means of collective action and armed resistance.
The Council of Assiniboia fed the smouldering flame by enacting more laws. It appeared woefully ignorant of the basic fact underlying the rule of law: law must rely on general compliance by the majority of the population or be implemented by force. The Métis Nation had little incentive to comply and the Company had no ability to enforce. More liberal legal mechanisms, institutions and policies would have availed the Company much better, but instead it aggravated the situation.
THE LAND AND MÉTIS MOBILITY
The Company tried to impose a land title system on Red River, with itself as sole authority for any sales. It passed a resolution that no servants would be permitted to settle at Red River unless they purchased at least fifty acres of land at a set price. The Company wanted to stop the Métis’ customary practice of land transfers, which it regarded as squatters selling something they had no right to sell.
The Métis Nation, of course, saw it quite differently. They believed they were the owners of the land, not squatters, and as such had the right to sell, share or trade their land according to their customs without the interference of the Company. And the Company’s interference, to their minds, was legion. The Métis were deeply suspicious of the Company’s motives. Title to land purchased or provided by the Company had several covenants tying the landholder to the Company. The lots were leased in a feudal manner. The lease was for a thousand years and had rents payable, a requirement to contribute to the civil, military and religious requirements of the colony, as well as a requirement that the leaseholder give several days of free labour each year to the maintenance of the roads. There were also several restrictive covenants, including a prohibition on distilling liquor. But the most galling restriction for the Métis was the covenant that prohibited trading furs with or importing goods from the Americans.
Most Métis resisted any attempt by the Company to regulate land title or their traditional landholding practices. Some may not have objected to having it regularized, but most objected to the onerous conditions the Company attached. Most preferred to continue with their customary landholding practices and the Company was unable to collect on its covenants. The Métis resistance to the Company’s attempt at controlling the land, and especially to the hated covenant prohibiting trading, was predictable. Few bothered to obtain land title from the Company, and they avoided bringing their furs back to Red River. By the 1840s there were more than five thousand Métis in Red River, most holding land without paper title. The Company could not force five thousand Métis to register their title, so title to the land in Red River continued with the two separate systems—Métis customary title and a few titles registered with the Company.
The Company never recognized or made any attempt to accommodate Métis Nation customs, values, preferences or laws. Its failure to recognize the Métis as a collective was in part because of Métis mobility and their long absences from Red River. The Company saw little reason to accommodate people who merely used Red River as a rendezvous and who really belonged elsewhere. As Alexander Ross put it,
[N]ot a tenth part of their number really belong to Red River, although they have from choice made it the land of their adoption. Hither, in fact, have flocked the half-breeds from all quarters east of the rocky mountain ridge, making the colony their great rendezvous and nursing place; while their restless habits lead them from place to place, from camp to camp, from the colony to the Plains, and from the Plains to the colony, like the wandering Arabs, or the more restless Mamelukes, wherever hunting or fishing hold out to them a precarious subsistence.18
But the Métis Nation did belong to Red River and indeed saw it as the heart of their motherland. What the Company and settlers missed was the purpose, the patterns and the catalysts that animated the Métis. Their movement was not aimless or without purpose. The Métis Nation’s mobility was a murmuration, the shape-shifting movement of a flock of starlings. If it were possible to map the social movements of the Métis Nation on the Plains and in the boreal forest in the mid to late 1800s, Métis mobility would reveal itself with the same fluidity. The Métis were closely connected and moved in family groupings. They reacted swiftly to danger, shifting their focus to face the danger as a group. Their movements were coordinated. Small family units shifted and feinted, gathered, separated and regathered within the vast North-West—their motherland, their place. They lived always on the cusp of change, ready for the next shift.
Their lifestyle was the antithesis of settling. They might set for a time, but it was more like the quiet before taking flight again. The catalyst for this movement could be the Sioux or the Blackfoot causing a hunting group to shift ground or bundle together to face the danger or avoid it. The catalyst could be a joyous wedding that brought hundreds of family and friends together from far and wide. They gathered into great assemblies when called by their leaders for political decisions. Winter caused large groups to splinter into small family units seeking a favourite wintering site. The catalyst could be that first blue-sky day in the spring when the newly dry ground made movement out onto the Plains possible. Often it was the buffalo that drew the Métis from all over the Plains to come together.
One event would affect them all because of their family connections and because they were so intensely aware of each other. Communication spread rapidly across the North-West. Each individual living within the group saw, felt and reacted as the entire group. That is what made the Métis stand tall and proud. Each man or woman was one person and all of them. They were a connected people, a living, fluid, synchronized system where thousands of people came together at Red River, Pembina, Turtle Mountain, Cypress Hills or Qu’Appelle and then split off to gather again in different formations.
Many Métis had homes on the Plains and homes in Red River. So, the Métis did belong to Red River. They saw the entire North-West as theirs, just as they claimed Qu’Appelle, Cypress Hills, Wood Mountain, Fort Edmonton, Rainy Lake and Île-à-la-Crosse—all the places where they built homes, traded, hunted, wintered and visited. They saw it all as their motherland, and Red River was the beating heart of that motherland.