Introduction

MARIE ROSE DELORME SMITH was born in 1861 to Urban Delorme and Marie Desmarais in the Red River. The Delorme family was of French-Metis ancestry and its members were primarily fur traders and buffalo hunters. My initial publication, The Identities of Marie Rose Delorme Smith: Portrait of a Metis Woman, 1861–1960 (2012), which examined Marie Rose’s documents and numerous other primary sources, revealed a multifaceted Metis identity.1 Although not confirmed by Marie Rose, early in the research it became clear that her family included Urbain Delorme Sr., a man referred to as “le chef des prairies,” and descended of the North West Company tradition. The Delormes were wealthy and were always politically active in the Red River area. Yet, from my vantage point, Marie Rose appeared to distance herself from her birth family, the Delormes, and the fact that they were involved in the conflict in the Red River region in 1869–1870 as well as the conflict in 1885. It appeared that Marie Rose negotiated her own identity less through ethnicity than through pure survival strategy.2 Whatever her survival strategy, there was some indication in her manuscripts that Marie Rose remained tentative about her public identity. It was also clear that, in public, she sought to subsume her Metis ethnicity.

The second subject of this book is Isabella Clark Hardisty Lougheed, who was also born in 1861 to Metis parents, William Hardisty and Mary Anne Allen. Although her Metis fur trade family had connections with the Red River area, her father’s responsibilities as a chief factor with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) meant that Isabella spent her formative years in the northern Mackenzie district. In Isabella’s case, she left few written documents, but, as a married woman who settled in southern Alberta, Isabella became the focus of much media attention. Thus, there are a number of primary sources available that help us understand how she negotiated her Metis identity. As with Marie Rose, there is evidence that, in public, Isabella sought to subsume her Metis ethnicity.

This book assumes a rare methodology and presentation in that it compares the lives of two Metis women for whom the comparison may initially seem illogical, based on the fact that one was of French-Metis ancestry and one of Anglo-Metis ancestry. Scholars of the Metis people have not reached a consensus on who might rightfully identify as Metis. There are some who argue that the Metis emerged as a people in the geographic area of the Red River, and specifically after the conflicts in 1816, 1869–1870, and 1885, while others argue that identity for the Metis was more about “webs of kinship” than it was locale.3 The perspective that Metis identity can be traced only to those who were connected to the locale of Red River would then disqualify Isabella as a Metis person, and would relegate her as an Indigenous person, who was, at best, “in between” the Indigenous and the Euro-North American worlds. The in-depth research that was conducted to support this book confirms that Metis identity and culture were diverse but inclusive, and that Isabella’s ethnicity was undeniably Metis.

Indeed, although a cursory look at Marie Rose and Isabella suggests that there might be few similarities in the adaptation of their Metis culture and identity after the end of the fur trade, there were actually a striking number of parallels in their lives. This close comparative study confirms that their parents valued daughters alongside sons, that both were privy to formal educations, that both of their families were involved in finding suitable Euro-North American husbands for their daughters, that both assumed active roles in the transitioning economies, and that both manipulated the fluid boundaries of identity. Indeed, both women were linked to Indigenous people, and both showed themselves to be intelligent, resourceful, and strong women whose lives are living testaments to the role of Metis women in the construction of the Prairie West.

In order to gain an understanding of the society in which Marie Rose and Isabella negotiated their adult identity, it is important to understand the changing social landscape as the fur trade was drawing to a close at the end of the nineteenth century. The western plains that would officially become Alberta in 1905 served as a colonial settlers’ space in which Indigenous people would eventually be relegated to occupying small tracts of land. Ideologies such as social gospel and beliefs in an edenic promised land left little space, both physical and literal, for Indigenous people who were increasingly seen as uncivilized and unsuited for success as farmers or business people in the emerging capitalist society. Geographical boundaries became more important, as did “racial” boundaries, which engendered beliefs in degrees of “Indianness” and questions about who could rightfully identify as “Indian” or “Metis,” with the answers often coming by way of government legislation. As a belief in the boundaries of race solidified, questions about Metis identity created challenges. Were they mixed-blood, were they Indigenous, to which community did they belong, did they belong at all or were they forever to reside in between other peoples, and would subsequent generations be less Metis and more Euro-North American?

My earlier publications focused only on Marie Rose Delorme Smith, examining the four main roles that the research to that point indicated, those of historical character, of folk historian, of author, and of a person who became one of the first homesteaders in southern Alberta.4 This book necessarily relies on some of the biographical data uncovered during the research for my earlier publications,5 as well as on some of the previous analysis (particularly of Marie Rose’s writing as it related to her identity). However, although my earlier research raised many questions, the scope of that research did not address in any depth how Marie Rose created a persona that allowed her to portray herself as a homesteading pioneer in the Anglo-dominated society that emerged in the Prairie West as new settlers arrived. There was also the question about the survival strategies of other Metis women who had settled away from the Red River area. Another question was whether Metis women of the fur trade were able to maintain their fur trade kinship connections, and whether those connections actually assisted or hindered their transition into the new society.

Given that Metis identity during the fur trade was embedded in webs of kinship, there was a clear question that emerged about how that identity was maintained or subsumed by Metis women, depending upon the ability of the men in the family group to transition successfully. There was also a question about whether French-speaking Metis women were able to transition as successfully as English-speaking Metis women. Another question that emerged was that of the role that Metis women assumed in the building of the Prairie West—how specifically did they contribute to the community-building organizations that were so crucial to the transition?

Although the research that supported my earlier publications did not delve into all of these questions, the information available about Marie Rose suggested that these questions could be addressed in a broader study. This was particularly so if a comparative study could be undertaken of Marie Rose’s life and that of another woman of Metis ancestry, especially an English-speaking woman from the Hudson’s Bay Company tradition. The indication was that much could be learned about the history of Metis women, and of their community of connections on a broader level, by undertaking close comparative case studies of individual Metis women. It was also clear that a study such as that which supported this book could inspire similar comparative research. At this point, few scholars have undertaken a comparative close case study of Metis people (particularly women) born of the two variants of fur trade society, the French-Metis and the country-born. Yet, because the history of the Metis people is complex and ecompasses so much of particularly western Canada, and because the sources are often difficult to identify, it is important that we study the Metis people on an individual basis.6

The editors of a recent collection of essays, while focusing on ethnic groups rather than way of life, suggest that “Métis” is not a “signifier of a particular population situated in a particular time or place.”7 Another recent study concurs with an analysis of Metis ethnicity that does not focus on geography. That study argues that ethnicity is culturally constructed, and that ethnic groups, particularly in modern settings, are “constantly recreating themselves and ethnicity is continuously reinvented in response to changing realities.”8

Indeed, this study of Marie Rose and Isabella confirms this to be the case. For these two Metis women, their identity was far more complex than “place.” Their stories raise questions about the permeable boundaries of identity for many other Metis people during the transitional period after the fur trade, and indeed in contemporary society, as there is no consensus on the “idea of being Métis in Canada today.”9 As was the case for Marie Rose and Isabella, some contemporary narratives by Metis women note that there was a silence about Metis identity in their own lives.10 It is important to remember that Metis identity was never static. Rather it was (and continues to be) negotiated and renegotiated, attesting to the “diversity, fluidity, resilience and silence of Metis identities.”11

In terms of methodology, this book relies on some of the same sources as women’s narratives and biography. However, although more sources have been identified for Marie Rose and Isabella than for many other Metis women, there are relatively few compared with other historical subjects. As Sarah Carter and Patricia McCormack note in their recent collection, encountering passages in the “sometimes somnolent and stuffy world of archival and documentary research is exciting, rewarding—and frustrating.” This is because, while the few references to Indigenous women in traditional historical sources “provide glimpses and bonds to place, and they breathe life into and connect us with the past[, they] also leave us wanting more.”12 If we are to have a broad understanding of the lives and experiences of Indigenous women, both during the fur trade and during the transitional period that followed, relying on women’s narratives, while expanding our resource base, is critical.

While biographies are rarely used as the basis for scholarly arguments, biography has become a useful tool for women’s history, and increasingly for less well-known women. However, it is clear that “much remains to be done to heighten awareness of the diversity of women” and to apply comparative approaches.13 Biographies can tell us a great deal about the history of the average woman by providing a wealth of specific information about the life course of differently positioned women, whose lives can then be viewed collectively and comparatively.14 As Jean Barman notes, focusing on the lives of individual women can lead us to question older interpretations and larger historical contexts.15 Yet women’s biography has been underused as a tool that actually presents very real opportunities to understand the histories of Alberta women in general.16 Perhaps this underuse is due to the fact that biographies often focus on “extraordinary” rather than ordinary people, and that Canada’s collective history has often identified more extraordinary men than women. Because they can be removed from the larger debates, such as the conflicts between French Metis and Anglo-Metis, biographical studies make important contributions to understanding the early twentieth-century history of Metis women, not only on an individual basis but on a broader level.17

While it is a micro-history of two women, and thus relies on some methodologies of biographical writing, this book is not a “great woman” approach to history, as biography often is. It is important to define biography in broad terms when writing about Indigenous women in particular, given the paucity of traditional sources.18 It is also important not to romanticize the lives of Marie Rose and Isabella in an effort to portray them as “great” or extraordinary women, as biography sometimes tends to do. Marie Rose and Isabella were women who struggled with the pressures of raising families, and with partners who were often away. They were forced to negotiate their identities in environments that were becoming increasingly Anglocentric. In fact, during the time in which Marie Rose was likely writing many of her manuscripts, in the early 1900s, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapters, whose targets in western Canada were primarily Roman Catholic and French-speaking residents, were particularily active in southern Alberta. Klan membership was strong in some districts, such as Calgary, which had three hundred members, and there were “chapters in three communities within 25 miles of the city.”19 For Marie Rose, there were many realities to consider as she wrote her manuscripts and “wrote out” parts of her history. For Isabella, her son Norman attended schools in which the schoolmasters held the opinion that the “Red Men of the West” did not care to work, due to innate characteristics as shiftless vagrants.20 Indeed, the reality of history is that it is multidimensional and must be viewed along its “vital edges.”21

By looking closely at their lives we can see the “vital edges” where Marie Rose and Isabella mixed, clashed, or cooperated with those around them. Perusing these “vital edges” where they came together with settlers and other Indigenous people provides traces that help us understand how Marie Rose and Isabella were able to publicly obscure their Metis identities and to recreate themselves as homesteading pioneers. Examining the relationships that Marie Rose and Isabella had with members of their changing communities also helps us understand their labour, the work involved in raising their children, and the unpaid service work they undertook, work that is so critical in organizing and maintaining social institutions as new societies emerge.22 Conversely, it is important to study aspects of their new society that lend themselves to providing an intimate look at both Marie Rose and Isabella.

That intimate look at Marie Rose and Isabella confirms that they formed not only marital partnerships with Charlie Smith and James Lougheed, respectively, but that they also formed business partnerships that helped their families to negotiate and succeed in the changing economy. In fact, it is difficult to fully understand the history of Marie Rose and Isabella without an understanding of their life partners. It is also true that, in the study of people of the past, we can never really know the “structure of feeling”23 of a particular era, and thus aspects of a person’s history, without examining the cultural components of the era in which historical subjects lived. Thus, it is important not only to understand Charlie Smith and James Lougheed, but also to get a sense of Marie Rose’s and Isabella’s kinship networks and how they adjusted to the changing culture during the transitional period at the end of the fur trade.

Given her own manuscripts, rather than study Marie Rose primarily from the perspective of legal documents and newspaper reports, as we, for the most part, must do with Isabella, there is an opportunity to understand Marie Rose’s history from her own perspective. However, because Marie Rose chose to reveal only some aspects of her history, and because Isabella left few documents, the analysis of both Marie Rose and Isabella at some point becomes somewhat abstract in the sense that we must allow for the zones of silence, and we must allow for both Marie Rose’s and Isabella’s clear desire to create enhanced personae as important members of their transitional society.

The ensuing comparison of Marie Rose and Isabella answers some of the important questions about their experience as the fur trade drew to a close, and exposes some of the questions that should be examined in the history of other Metis women and men. Specifically, just as territorial boundaries were important to the Metis consciousness at various times during the fur trade, individual land ownership for Marie Rose and Isabella assumed a level of significance in the new economy. In regard to their ability to adjust to that new economy, it appears that Isabella, the Anglo-Metis woman, rose above those challenges with more ease, at least financially. At the same time, both women continued to rely on aspects of the Metis culture of their youth, and they both maintained contact with their fur trade family networks that were so crucial during the fur trade era. Yet both did establish fictive kinship connections with members of their society that they knew were important to the new economy. Their ability to build new community connections speaks to the fact that both Marie Rose and Isabella continued to contribute social capital to their respective partnerships in the way that Metis women at the height of the fur trade had contributed. Yet, in the end, both felt the need to either suppress or repackage the Metis identity and culture that had sustained both of their fur trade families and that, in many ways, continued to sustain them.

The research that supports this book confirms that comparative studies can provide insight into the lives of other Metis women during the transitional period, and it raises questions about the possibilities for the study of the Metis men in their fur trade families. We know that Marie Rose had two brothers and that Isabella had four brothers who survived into adulthood, but we do not really know at this point in the research what became of those siblings. When Isabella hosted royalty and other important guests at her grand home, were her Metis siblings, cousins, or mother present? When Marie Rose hosted the businessmen and political figures of southern Alberta at her ranch, were her Metis siblings, cousins, and mother present? There is some documentation of where both Marie Rose’s and Isabella’s brothers settled after the end of the fur trade. However, there has yet to be uncovered information that speaks to their ability to transition, and to the history of Marie Rose’s and Isabella’s own children.

There is also the question of the other Metis women who were Marie Rose’s and Isabella’s neighbours in the early pioneer sedentary communities of southern Alberta. Did they forge connections with influential Euro-North American people as a way to accommodate the difficulties that their Metis identities presented, as had Marie Rose and Isabella? Did other Metis women continue to rely on the Metis culture and identity in the private sphere as a way to transition? Like Marie Rose and Isabella, were they important figures in the transitional period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the fur trade gave way to a sedentary economy based on agriculture and industrialized commerce? These questions about other Metis women and men cannot be answered in the context of this book, but they remain important areas of future study.