5

Trader Delorme’s Family

THE FIRST CHAPTER of Marie Rose Delorme’s unpublished epic, “The Adventures of the Wild West of 1870,” introduced readers to the untamed land that the “daring voyageurs” discovered.1 By the second chapter, Marie Rose informed her reader that her father was a fur trader “amongst the Indians of the plains,” who had in his younger days assumed the life of “a settler on the White Horse Plain” to farm on a “small scale.” She continued that her father was a “clever man, full of life,” who made “enough money to leave a fair estate for his wife and five children.”2

While Marie Rose devoted much attention in her later years to writing herself into pioneer history and not writing her Delorme family into history, her identity formation began as a child of the fur trade. She traversed the plains with her Metis family and she learned Metis skills and culture by working alongside her Metis mother. For a short period of time, and like many Metis girls, Marie Rose was sent to a convent to be educated by Roman Catholic nuns. The goal was not necessarily that she would no longer be Metis but rather that she would retain her position as one of the higher class of Metis who were buffalo hunters and traders, and who maintained close links with the Church.

As an adult far removed from the fur trade, Marie Rose’s literary work began a process of negotiating an identity in the new Prairie West and is, for the most part, truthful in its telling. Yet it is significant that Marie Rose did not explore the various conflicts in the Red River area, for she likely had some knowledge of at least the most well known—those occurring in 1869–1870 and 1885. This is especially so given that she had close family members involved in the fighting on the side of those who opposed annexationist plans by Canada in 1869–1870. In 1885, when Louis Riel again represented the Metis as they challenged the Canadian government’s land policies, Marie Rose’s uncles served as Riel’s soldiers.

Marie Rose’s family had been involved in most confrontations in Red River, beginning with the conflict in 1816 between incoming settlers and Metis hunters and traders whose families had been in Red River for generations. While there is no written documentation that he was involved in the fighting, François Delorme, Marie Rose’s great-grandfather, later offered a deposition to the Coltman Commission.3 Her family was again involved in conflict in the Red River area in 1849, when Pierre Guillaume Sayer and three other Metis traders were charged with illegally trading in furs.4 Among those supporting Sayer was again a member of Marie Rose’s family, on this occasion her grandfather, le chef des prairies, Urbain Delorme Sr.

It is not clear that Marie Rose’s father was ever involved in the politics of Red River, but he did die a young man, leaving his widow to care for Marie Rose and her siblings. While her mother remarried, when the economy began to change with the disappearance of the buffalo and the incoming settlers, Marie Rose was to become a valuable asset for her fur trading family. As a woman who had survived for a time as a widow and who knew that the economy was changing, Marie Rose’s mother chose a Euro-North American trader who appeared wealthy and whom she judged would be able to extend the family network economically. As a member of a wealthier Metis extended family, Marie Rose would also become a valuable commodity for her robe-and-whiskey-trading Euro-North American husband. Although Marie Rose vehemently opposed the marriage arrangement her mother made, she had few options as a female member of the Delorme family, whose influence was waning.

In order to understand how Marie Rose’s family achieved a position of some influence, it is important to explore her early childhood and the life path of her family members. Marie Rose Delorme was born in Saint François Xavier, Red River, on 18 October 1861, to Urbain Delorme Jr. and Marie Desmarais.5 Marie Rose was the second eldest of four surviving siblings, Elise, Urbain,6 Madeleine, and Charlie. Elise, also known as Eliza, later married George Ness, who served as a justice of the peace in Batoche in 1885 when fighting erupted between Metis people and Canadian government forces. Madeleine married Ludger Gareau, and they also had a home in Batoche in 1885. Urbain married Nellie Gladstone, and he settled for a time in Pincher Creek. Charlie was an adopted “Sioux” boy; although he is not listed in some of the family genealogical documents, Marie Rose wrote that he was christened Charlie Ross in honour of his godfather, her uncle, Donald (Daniel) Ross.

Whatever the arrangements by which a Sioux boy was taken in by the Delorme family—by formal adoption or even sale—Marie Rose wrote that her family rescued Charlie after he was abandoned by his people. She wrote about Charlie that “he does not know he is pure Sioux Indian,”7 and that he “called us brothers and sisters.”8 On another occasion, Marie Rose wrote, “We loved him as a true brother and he believed himself to be such.”9 There are no more specifics that could verify when Marie Rose’s family informally adopted Charlie, but there is some indication that he continued to be regarded as a sibling for the rest of his life. When he married, like so many of Marie Rose’s family, he settled for a time in Pincher Creek near Marie Rose.10

Marie Rose’s mother, Marie Desmarais, was the daughter of Joseph Desmarais and Adelaide Clairmont, both of Metis ancestry.11 Joseph was the son of François Desmarais and a woman described by Marie Rose’s granddaughter, Jock Carpenter, as a “full-blooded Saulteaux maiden.”12 It was with evident pride that Marie Rose’s granddaughter communicated this ethnicity, the Desmarais family being one of the earliest freemen families in the West.

Marie Rose’s father, Urbain Jr., was the son of Urbain Delorme Sr. and Madeleine Vivier.13 Urbain Sr. was born in the North West, the son of a French Canadian man, François Enos (et Hénault) dit Delorme,14 and a woman of the Saulteaux tribe, identified as Madeleine Sauteuse.15 By 1816, Marie Rose’s Delorme family was already politically active in Red River, when François Delorme was implicated in “La bataille de Grenouillère” (Seven Oaks). When François Delorme gave his disposition in the aftermath of the Seven Oaks incident, he offered the names of those who gave the orders to burn the houses of the European settlers.16 In 1817, François was also listed as one of the signatories on the petition drawn up by residents of Red River when they requested Roman Catholic missionaries for their settlement. His occupation at that time was listed as HBC interpreter.17 It is not surprising that François was politically active in Red River. As the oldest Metis community west of the Great Lakes, Red River served as the centre of Metis social activity and political resistance until 1870, after which time many Metis left the settlement for points west and north.

For the Metis of Red River, even prior to the exodus from Red River, there was frequent interaction with northern Metis people who not only travelled to Red River to trade but sent their children to Red River to be educated.18 Marie Rose’s family would have had interaction with the northern Metis, and they were also connected to Cuthbert Grant Jr., the man who has subsequently been referred to as the first leader of the Metis people. Cuthbert McGillis, who married Marguerite Delorme (Marie Rose’s aunt), had a sister named Marie McGillis, who became Cuthbert Grant’s wife.19 When Grant was establishing his group of Metis settlers on the White Horse Plains he reportedly reserved the lots closest to him for “the bravest men and most successful hunters among his people.”20 Apparently, Marie Rose’s grandfather, Urbain Delorme Sr., met those qualifications, for he is listed as one of Grant’s close neighbours.21 Grant’s settlement on the White Horse Plains, initially named Grantown but later called Saint François Xavier,22 was Marie Rose’s birthplace and that of most of her fur trade family.

Not unlike many of the early traders who were stationed in fur trade country, François Delorme had sent his son (Marie Rose’s grandfather), Urbain Sr., when he was four years old, to Quebec to be baptised and to live with an aunt. Although he was clearly Metis, on one occasion Marie Rose seemed to suggest that her grandfather, Urbain Sr., was a French Canadian man born in Quebec.23 She wrote that he left that province for the West, finding a settlement of “Scotch half-breeds living on White Horse Plains…and decided to cast his lot with them.”24 Despite his long absence from fur trade country, as an adult, Marie Rose’s grandfather went on to do far more than cast his lot with “half-breeds.” Rather, he achieved a position of authority in Metis society and was often described as le chef des prairies. According to some historians, next to Cuthbert Grant, the elder Delorme was the “greatest of the plains hunters and traders.”25

In comparison to many of his contemporaries, Marie Rose’s grandfather could be described as a man of means. When the newspaper, Le Métis, reported his death, in error, in its 21 February 1878 edition (which it corrected in a subsequent issue on 9 May 1878), it stated that he was “l’un des plus anciens et des plus riches traiteurs de la Rivière Rouge.”26 Urbain Sr. reportedly once brought a bag of gold for safekeeping to the nuns at the convent at Saint François Xavier and advised that they would be wise to store it safely, for it was valued at “quatre mille piastres” ($4,000).27 In his will, Marie Rose’s grandfather left an impressive sum of $4,461.04,28 which was later managed by Archbishop Alexandre Antonin Taché. A number of Urbain Sr.’s descendants, including Marie Rose, accessed funds from his estate for many years after his death.29

Further suggestion of the elder Delorme’s status is found in oral testimony, recorded in the Pincher Creek Echo by Emma Lynch-Staunton, who settled on a ranch in the Pincher Creek district in the 1890s, near Marie Rose.30 Based upon her conversations with Marie Rose, Lynch-Staunton wrote that Urbain Sr. “prospered greatly in the fur-trading business and at one time was reputed to have 90,000 (pounds) in the bank.”31 Hudson’s Bay Company records confirm that, by the 1860s, Metis traders such as Norbert and Urbain Delorme earned as much as $1,000 per year in the buffalo robe trade.32

The brief descriptions of her life as a young girl in Red River demonstrate that Marie Rose’s family followed a lifestyle that came to be viewed as more typically Metis than that of Metis born in other geographic areas. In the summer, Marie Rose’s family, descendants of the Saulteaux, farmed a plot of land on the banks of the Red River, where a typical river lot

might contain one or two dwelling houses, a barn, a stable, a storage house, a summer kitchen, and several other outbuildings, as well as ten or twenty acres of cultivated land. Behind the lot would be a second lot of equal width and depth knowns as the “hay priviliege.” In many cases, the household would also possess another lot directly across the river where wood and hay could be gathered. Because few farms could have survived on the production of wheat and barley and vegetables, members of most households participated in trade, wage labour, or the annual buffalo hunts. The latter, which included 100 to 300 hunters, were essential to the survival of the settlement and have been likened to roundups in a ranch community.33

In fact, the Saulteaux had engaged in some form of agriculture or stock raising in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan prior to the treaties.34 Life in the communities in the Red River area, such as the Protestant ones like St. Andrew’s, where many of the Hudson’s Bay Company men lived with their country wives, as well as the Roman Catholic ones, such as Saint François Xavier, where Marie Rose’s family lived, was dictated by the seasons. In the summer there were fish to be caught and river traffic was steady while Indigenous families camped along the riverbank. In the fall, the Metis salt makers visited, as did Indigenous purveyors of fish oil, while many families left on their winter hunting and trading trips.35

As well as being early farmers, Marie Rose’s family often wintered on the plains. The first description that Marie Rose provides of her memories setting out on the prairies with her Metis family was when she was seven years old, in 1868. Marie Rose is not clear whether this was a hunting expedition or strictly meant to engage in trading. However, it is possible the trip involved both activities and that her grandfather, le chef des prairies, was along on the 1868 trip, given that he died in 1886. By 1868, the number of carts setting out would be significantly less than at the height of the Metis-dominated economy in Red River.36 Yet the semi-annual nomadic lifestyle that Marie Rose followed as a child remained very similar to that of her ancestors. If he was part of this particular caravan in 1868, as captain, the elder Delorme would have had soldiers serving under his command to assist in enforcing the rules of the hunt. It would have been the duty of the soldiers to set up camp, which often “occupied as much ground as a modern city.”37

While Marie Rose did not offer specifics about the trip across the plains in 1868 to the winter hunting grounds, Norbert Welsh remembered that the trip from Saint François Xavier to the Victoria Mission northeast of Edmonton took thirty days. The traders Welsh travelled with carried supplies for trading that included items such as

tobacco, tea, sugar, powder, shot, small bullets, Hudson’s Bay blankets, all kinds of prints and cottons, vermilion (lots of vermilion), axes, butcher knives, files, copper kettles, guns, and—the main thing—alcohol, lots and lots of alcohol.38

At the first opportunity, the hunt would bring in the winter’s supply of meat. Indeed, at the height of the buffalo-hunting era, one hunt would often be adequate to supply needs for the entire winter. Regarding the social aspect of the hunt, Welsh noted the traders of the plains were the “aristocrats” of the fur trade, continuing, “We paid attention to class distinctions in those days, and we buffalo-hunters and traders thought quite well of ourselves.”39

Even at a time when the buffalo were becoming more scarce, the profit on trade goods could be enough to render these traders “aristocrats.” Welsh gave an example of his accounting:

For one buffalo robe valued at a dollar and a quarter, we gave in trade one pound of tea, which cost twenty-five cents at Fort Garry, and half a pound of sugar which cost five cents…We sold our tea for a dollar a pound, sugar for fifty cents a pound…Any kind of print or cotton measured to the extension of the arms, approximately two yards, and which cost ten cents a yard, we sold for a dollar a yard. For powder, one pint (two little tin dippersful made a pound) that cost forty cents a pound by the keg, we got a dollar a pound. Bullets that cost two dollars and a half for a twenty-five pound sack, we sold at the rate of ten for fifty cents.40

According to Welsh, the “merchant princes of those times lived high,” particularly when they travelled to Saint Paul with a cargo of furs. In their canteens they carried their own supplies, which included

all the necessaries and luxuries of camp life and travel—tea, sugar, spices, cheese, jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves, bacon and canned meats, gunpowder, shot and bullets. And then we had wild game which was plentiful along the trail.41

In this instance, Welsh’s descriptions do not suggest that there were no challenges for traders, no matter the size of the brigades, as they made these trips across the plains and to sell furs in the larger centres. Welsh related many instances when bridges were washed away, or times when rivers needed to be navigated with horses and carts as they swam across fast-moving waters dodging ice jams. Fur traders always had to be on the lookout as well for Indigenous people seeking to reclaim prized animals, which had been traded earlier for other goods. There were also winters when few buffalo were found and no money was made when harsh conditions had forced the movement of Indigenous groups.

For the Metis, there was strength in numbers. According to Alexander Ross, in 1840, earlier than the hunts that Welsh was on, he witnessed 1,210 carts leaving Red River for the annual hunt. On this occasion, when roll call was taken, 1,630 souls were counted. This number of carts would surely form a “strong barrier” when camp was set up. The Metis survived these challenging trips in large part because they had strict rules in place. With few variations, the laws of the hunt were generally as follows:

no buffalo were to be run on the Sabbath; no party was to lag behind without permission; no person was to run buffalo before the general order; every captain and his men were to take turns patrolling the camp; on the first offense of these laws, the offender had his saddle and bridle cut up; on the second offence, the offender’s coat was taken and cut up; on the third offence, the offender was flogged; any person convicted of theft was brought to the middle of the camp, then his or her name was called out three times, adding the word “thief” each time.42

While the hunt described by Ross occurred before Marie Rose’s birth, and certainly long before she settled in Pincher Creek, this part of the Metis culture carried on for the Metis long past the fur trade. As Maria Campbell wrote, the annual buffalo hunt bore much similarity to the annual trips with her Metis family in the twentieth century, when they set out as a family group to pick roots and berries, and thus is one example of the continuity of the Metis history and culture. While there were no more buffalo, and no longer a Hudson’s Bay Company with which to trade, the items of trade between the Metis and the farmers during Campbell’s time were roots, berries, nuts, moose meat, and fish.43

For the Metis, there was always time for socializing on the trail. While Marie Rose did not speak much about this aspect of the annual trips with her father, Norbert Welsh wrote that there were often times when real feasts were put up. Welsh described one such feast he hosted:

We would dance the old-time dances and the Red River Jig—reel of four, reel of eight, double jig, strip the willow, rabbit chase, Tucker circle, drops of brandy, and all the half-breed dances. There were always lots of fiddlers. Nearly every man could play the fiddle. Then we would go to another family…This feasting lasted about ten days…Some of these dances took place at the Hudson’s Bay posts.44

It was common knowledge that there was rarely a buffalo-hunting expedition in which the fiddle was left behind. Log huts played host to festivities, in which

jigs, reels, and quadrilles were danced in rapid succession…The men wore shirts, trousers, belts, and moccasins…A black-eyed beauty in blue calico and a strapping Bois Brulé would jump up from the floor and outdo their predecessors…In the intervals of the dance Madame Gingrais…sang some French ballads and a Catholic hymn.45

Indeed, along with the feasting, there was always the need to remember the spiritual aspect of the Metis culture. Often, there were priests along, but even when there were not, the hunters never left for the hunt without saying a prayer, which they believed ensured their safety. How safe they remained during the buffalo runs was also a matter of pride. As Norbert Welsh related, it was often a competition to determine who had the fastest horse in the brigade.46 In fact, the tradition of racing horses continued for the Metis long after the buffalo disappeared and the Metis had settled in areas across the prairies.

While Marie Rose wrote about her father’s trading expeditions to the prairies from Red River, which would have been much similar to those described by Welsh and Ross, she did not refer to him as a hunter. However, given her grandfather’s role as captain of the hunting brigades for some twenty-five years, it is likely that her father went along on numerous hunts and that Marie Rose lived the culture of those hunts herself. Marie Rose’s granddaughter, Jock Carpenter, does provide specific details of a hunt that Urbain Delorme (Marie Rose’s father) was on, in which

at a full but easy gallop, Urbain cast an eye over the plain which stretched before him…Fully-loaded guns at the ready, the riders separated to cut off the now-stampeding buffalo…Urbain shot…a cow went down…Urbain did not wait to watch the scene but, wheeling his horse, started after another animal, loading as he rode.47

This excerpt suggests that Carpenter believed Marie Rose’s father was an experienced buffalo hunter.

Another buffalo hunter, John Kerr, describes what Marie Rose’s father might have experienced on these hunts. Kerr was a soldier who came to Red River in 1870, tasked with defending against the Metis provisional government. He then elected to stay in Red River and appears to have gained the respect of Metis hunters, even claiming he was adopted into the family of Gabriel Dumont, who reportedly addressed him as “mon frère.”48 During one trip onto the plains in the spring of 1872, Kerr recalled that each family would have up to a dozen carts and extra ponies. The only ones who stayed behind were the sick or elderly. After the call of “let loose,” when any number of buffalo were killed, carts were driven onto the field by the women, and

in an incredibly short time the beast is skinned, cut up and rady [sic] for the carts…The meat was brought back to camp, where what was not for immediate use was made into dried meat and pemmican…The skins, those not used for pemmican bags or shaganappi, are hair scraped and flesh removed and dressed for moccasins, teepees.49

In regard to the trading that took Metis families on “well-worn trails from Fort Garry as far west as Edmonton,” Kerr wrote,

The usual load for a cart was about 800 pounds. Our journey from Winnipeg as far as the South Saskatchewan river took approximately one month…We averaged about 18 miles a day.50

By the later 1860s, when Marie Rose remembered setting out for the plains with her father, agricultural disasters in Red River had already convinced many Metis that the sale of pemmican and buffalo robes was more dependable than agriculture. Although it appears that Marie Rose’s father and mother had been relatively wealthy at one time, there were numerous problems in Red River when Urbain Delorme was farming. Farmers were devastated by floods and locusts almost every year between 1821 and 1870, resulting in better survival strategies among the buffalo hunting and trading segment of the population.51

Marie Rose wrote that her father had farmed on a small scale until the “money wasn’t coming fast enough for him.” Urbain Delorme had then travelled to St. Paul, where he picked up merchandise and set out for places where he thought the “biggest camps of Indians would winter.”52 In the fall, the family would set out with a caravan of Red River carts for the plains, where they typically spent the winter hunting and trading with Indigenous groups. Marie Rose confirmed that the family ventured quite some distance onto the plains, given that it took three months to travel back to Red River with the buffalo robes and furs.53 Although her father died a young man at the age of thirty-six, and his family may have struggled for money at some point, Marie Rose wrote that her father “made enough money to leave a fair estate for his wife and five children.”54 In addition, she wrote, “We lived mostly on wild game while travelling, father used to bank nearly all his money; thus when he died, still in the prime of his life, he left us a very considerable fortune.”55

Marie Rose wrote little of her father’s death, saying only that she was still young when he died. Her grandchildren do not know of, nor do his death records indicate, a cause. However, Urbain Delorme Jr. died prior to the fighting in 1869–1870, so he was not involved, although many members of the Delorme family were. One granddaughter thought Marie Rose’s father may have died in a horse accident.56 Many buffalo hunters died in horse accidents and, as many have observed, while the Metis of Red River may have

sustained themselves in a variety of ways such as fishing, trapping for furs, practicing small-scale agriculture, and working as wage labourers for the Hudson’s Bay Company, they were first and foremost buffalo hunters.57

Although Marie Rose spoke primarily of trading and farming, given the inhospitable environment and unsophisticated agricultural technology during the time her family lived in Red River,58 there would have been an inherent need to hunt, notwithstanding the fact that hunting was an integral part of the Delorme family culture. Thus, Marie Rose’s father may have died in a hunting accident, as family members came to believe.

At the start of her unpublished manuscript, “Eighty Years on the Plains,” Marie Rose demonstrates a pride in her father, and perhaps unknowingly her pleasure at being introduced to eventual prairie settlement. She wrote,

I was very excited as any other little girl might be, who, at the early age of ten years, was embarking on a winter trip over the great western plains, from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains…To-day [sic], October 5th, 1871, father was taking all of us on his annual fur-trading trip into the great North-west, and for the winter months, we must bid “Au revoir” to the farm on White Horse Plains, and until our arrival back in the spring, father would now be known as Trader Delorme.59

As with most Metis, Marie Rose was familiar with the customs of the Indigenous people who lived on the plains and with whom her father traded when he became “Trader Delorme,” some of which are described in detail in her unpublished manuscripts and referred to in other sections of this book. In her description of the Dakota boy that her family adopted, Marie Rose described rather gruesome circumstances in which the boy’s mother was killed by another of the chief’s wives in an act purely motivated by jealousy. As an explanation, Marie Rose reasoned, “Sioux Indians are very mean disposition and treacherous, you can’t depend on them.”60 In this regard, Marie Rose’s views would have been very similar to those of her Metis fur trading kinship network, given that the Metis, though trading with them by the 1870s, had often clashed with Dakota (Sioux) over contested territories and had closer links and sympathies for the Cree and Saulteaux people.61

Marie Rose confirmed that her father associated more often with the somewhat acculturated Cree, whom she said “mingled oftener with the White Traders from the east, thus learning white man’s ways much quicker.” She went on to write, “Other tribes, who were in constant contact with the Whites, and with whom Father used to trade, were the Sarcees, the Stonies, the Peigans, and the Bloods. There were also the Salteaux.”62 The fact that Marie Rose would list these various First Nation people suggests that her family’s trips were quite extensive throughout the prairies, thus requiring them to travel with many supplies and experienced hunters.

According to Marie Rose, her father at one time had some forty Red River carts fully loaded, a covered democrat for “mother and children,” and seventy-five head of horses.63 If the wagons each carried eight hundred pounds, this suggests that Urbain Delorme was a trader of some worth. Among the items of trade that Marie Rose lists are prints, knives, guns, ammunition, and axes, for which her father received in return furs, buffalo hides, bladders, grease, and pemmican.64 The children were expected to help set up camp and to gather what they could, including country foods such as eggs, berries, and roots, as well as traditional medicinal supplies.

The need to hunt would have increased when traditional transport methods that employed many of the Metis were threatened with the arrival of steamboats. Built in North Dakota, the Anson Northrup was the first steamboat to arrive in Red River in 1859, inspiring the HBC to experiment with steam as well. The company promptly acquired property two hundred miles south of Fort Garry, which it named Georgetown. Yet freighting by steamboat was not extensive until 1872, when the Northern Pacific Railway reached Moorehead from Duluth. By 1875, trade had increased to the point that the Red River Transportation Company carried some fifty thousand tons of freight on the river in that year alone.65

In addition to the technological advances inspired by the introduction of steam, there was a changing political climate in the Red River area. Thus, the HBC determined to stop using “French Halfbreeds” from that settlement, most of who supported Riel, and to make changes to the transportation system by increasingly relying on steam. Not only would steam reduce the need for Red River boatmen but it would lessen the requirements of pemmican from plains provisioners. In fact, Isabella’s uncle, Donald A. Smith, had sent word to London in 1870 about the urgency to adopt the use of steamboats, reportedly vowing to hire only “English Halfbreeds and Swampy Cree from Red River,” thus freezing out the French Metis believed responsible for the “general mutiny.”66

While Marie Rose wrote that her father abandoned farming for full-time trading in 1871 (in the midst of the changes brought by the introduction of steamboats), he actually died in January of that year. Marie Rose was writing from memory, there is some indication in this particular section of her manuscript that she wrote “The Adventures of the Wild West of 1870” when she was seventy-six years old, thus in approximately 1938. Given the majority of her writing was done when she was far removed from the fur trade, there are likely errors in her recollections.67 Nonetheless, Marie Rose repeated in her “Eighty Years on the Plains” articles published in Canadian Cattlemen, the story about the trip over the prairies in 1871, but now with specific details about the travel arrangements:

In the spring of 1871, with our train of 40 Red River carts, and the usual number of riders and 75 head of horses, led by the covered democrat, or schooner, which housed mother and us five children, we turned our course to the great prairies, seeking out the largest camps where the Indians would winter and the greatest trade in furs would take place.68

If Marie Rose’s dates are accurate on this occasion, her mother would have been venturing onto the plains without her husband, given that he died in January of 1871, and she did not marry Cuthbert Gervais, another Metis man, until 20 September 1872.69 However, whether she was an independent trader on this occasion is not certain, since Marie Rose describes her mother as being “housed” in the covered democrat along with the children. Yet it would not have been unheard of for Marie Rose’s mother to be an independent trader for a time, or even an accomplished hunter for that matter. Oral history tells us that Cecelia Boyer, wife of Norbert Welsh, had her own brigade and that Isabelle Falcon had a reputation for good hunting and shooting abilities. Thérèse Schindler and Madeleine La Framboise, Metis sisters, assumed the role of trader after their husbands died.70 These two women demonstrated themselves to be astute and capable traders when widowed.71 However, it remains that most written records from the fur trade era do not record much trading activity on the part of women.

Maria Campbell heard stories for years in her own communities of “women who have not only raised children alone but who were also skilled hunters, trappers, and fishermen; who built their own cabins, made snowshoes, and ran dog teams.” Campbell relates the story of her family member, Qui chich, who became a successful farmer, respected medicine woman, and moneylender after her husband’s death.72

If the women were not independent traders or skilled hunters, their primary tasks on the buffalo hunt were to tend to the meat and skins. Mrs. John Norquay, wife of the Metis man who became premier of Manitoba, related the method of making pemmican on the plains when women accompanied the hunt. According to Mrs. Norquay,

there were two ways in which pemmican was cooked. One, which was known as rubaboo, was made by boiling the pemmican with potatoes, and with onions and any other vegetables…Of course, there were several grades of pemmican. It was made on the plains by the women who accompanied the buffalo hunters. They pounded the buffalo meat and then poured melted buffalo fat over it and sewed it up in buffalo hide.73

This is one of the customs Marie Rose knew well, for she continued to make pemmican until the end of her life, when she was living in Edmonton in the 1950s, far removed from fur trade society.

In Marie Rose’s case, after her father died, there was very likely a need for her mother to generate money by undertaking trading trips. Marie Rose explained that the land at Red River was willed to her younger brother, with her mother having the use of it as long as she needed it to support her young family. There was a fair sum of money left in the care of Roman Catholic priests; however, Marie Rose and her siblings still accessed that money when they were later married, so it is not clear if Marie Delorme continued to rely on her husband’s estate. It is possible that Marie Delorme was an independent trader for a time, given that Marie Rose described her mother as owning “twenty Red River carts, a democrat and thirty head of horses.”74 However, by the time she was a widow, the economy of pemmican and buffalo robes had declined, but agricultural challenges still necessitated a nomadic lifestyle for at least part of the year. The Delormes had an extensive kinship network and Marie Rose’s mother could have continued to travel the plains with them to carry on trading.

Marie Rose’s mother could have continued to farm the land at Red River, as well, because Urbain Delorme had stipulated that his wife could live on the land until the children were “of age.” Thus, it is also fair to assume that Urbain’s wife would have had assistance with farm labour, not only from blood relatives. As Norbert Welsh related, “The traders were like one big family. They treated, and addressed each other as if they were related.”75 It is likely that Marie Rose’s family carried on much as they had before her father’s death—that is, they remained in Red River for part of the year and then traded for another part of the year, even when there were no longer buffalo. As Norbert Welsh put it,

There was no more hunting on the plains…The Indians and half-breeds came to my house to trade, but business was very poor. Trading in furs was practically at an end…I began to buy cattle.76

After putting in a crop of wheat for three years, and losing a large portion of it to frost, Welsh, like so many other Metis at that time, concluded there was not much money in farming, so he turned to freighting.77 According to Marie Rose, her mother did the same. She wrote that her mother was “used to roaming life so when she re-married they decided to freight for the Hudson’s Bay Co.” Having given up farming altogether by this time, along with her new husband, Marie Delorme Gervais transported freight from Winnipeg to Edmonton, where they would also trap and trade for whatever game could be found.78

Finances must have become more difficult for Marie Rose’s mother as well. Marie Rose’s sister Elise Delorme wrote a letter to Msg. Alexandre Antonin Taché, dated 12 November 1874, from Saint François Xavier, requesting money for her mother and family.79 In the letter, Elise apologized for the poor quality of the paper and asked that the bishop spare a hundred dollars so that they might buy warm clothing and food for the winter. Elise indicated she had already been turned down by her grandfather, who advised her that her father’s affairs were now being managed by the bishop.80 This request for assistance could suggest that Marie Delorme Gervais and her new husband were struggling to feed her family. On the other hand, it could simply mean that Marie Rose’s mother was trying to exercise assertiveness in accessing some of the funds from her late husband’s estate.

A degree of assertiveness was necessary for women during the fur trade, for their duties were many. Babies were the constant companions of their mothers, and were often breastfed until the age of two or three, which undoubtedly lead to the development of a strong sense of responsibility and strong bonds between mothers and children. All indications are that Marie Rose was enthralled by her mother, and although she wrote little about Marie Delorme Gervais, her admiration was evident when she did write about her. For example, with a sense of pride, Marie Rose wrote,

She told me the stories of the horrible practices they [young Indigenous men] went through, which, though they frightened me, yet I listened to them fascinated. I will tell you about them just as mother told them to me, as we sat around the central fire of the Teepee.81

The imagery of a close bond is striking, as Marie Rose continued, “I snuggled up close to her, listening and inhaling the smell of the fragrant tobacco she had bought in St. Paul…all her stories in time occupied many winter evenings.”82

It was on those “many winter evenings” on the trail that Marie Rose learned of the Indigenous customs that she later related in her writing, often from the perspective of an omniscient third party. Around the central fire of the teepee, snuggled close to her mother, Marie Rose learned of her mother’s belief that “the Sun Dance was the greatest ceremony these Indians could perform in worshipping their god.”83 Although in her later years far removed from the fur trade she eventually denounced many of the Indigenous customs as cruel, Marie Rose still felt the need to implore readers to understand that “each ritual of this dance was carried out for a certain purpose.”84

Based on the stories related by her mother and in her own writing, Marie Rose demonstrated a belief that there was a dividing line between Metis and First Nation people, and that this was evident in many areas, including spirituality. As an example, she wrote of her early days on the road with her Metis family that the hunters travelled

day after day when Sabbath day came every body respect the day of worship the Captain would call every body attention they all gather pick an elder person lead the prayer and holy rosary if missionary amongst them they hold regular holy sacrifice of the Mass.85

On the other hand, Marie Rose wrote,

The Indians, the old tribes they had their way of worship, some believe in Sun some believe in owls, that was a great medicine bird for them if an owl come near a camp and howl at night it was sure a death warning that was their belief same as a dog if he howls and look up at the sky at the same time that another warning.86

Marie Rose wrote about the many medicinal practices of Indigenous people, including the use of various roots and herbs, which she likely learned from her mother. For example, she described the cure for rheumatism in detail, writing that the custom necessitated killing an older buffalo, quickly pulling out the entrails, and placing the sick person inside so they could “absorb the natural animal heat.”87 According to Marie Rose, First Nation people had cured many of their elderly of rheumatism and other “bone diseases” by following these customs. Although she admitted that the Indigenous custom worked, she also noted this cure would be “an awful hard thing to stand.”88 Concluding her story, Marie Rose wrote that this was the “real Indian life of the plains.”89

Marie Rose also shared other customs, like her mother’s rendition of how the “Indians” made their bows and arrows out of “chock [sic] cherry wood” and twisted sinew, making them “very strong with a flint rock end. They trim the flint rock to a sharp point so it can pierce anything that is shot.”90 On another instance, she wrote, “To doctor themselves they used the warth of poplar tree…They have a weed that grows in swamps…They call ki-ni-ki-nick.”91 Although they were reportedly her mother’s words, Marie Rose concluded, “Indians are not fools, they are nature’s best scholars.”92 In fact, John Norquay’s wife Elizabeth referred to “kinikinik” as the inner bark of the red willow, which served the Metis both as a substitute for tobacco and as a poultice against swelling.93

For her part, Marie Rose preferred to refer to it as something First Nation people used, also describing how they used a baby bag lined with moss and a sort of baby powder made of pulverized rotten wood.94 She went on in detail about the custom, switching to the first person in this instance, indicating that she later relied on these customs herself:

[I used an] Indian bag to wrap my new born babies in…I should tell you about the moss I used in my Indian baby bag. I bought it from the Northern Indians, and mother taught me to heat it in a frying pan, so if there were any insects hidden in the moss they would be driven out or killed.95

Johnny Grant described the work of Metis women in Red River in the mid-nineteenth century, when Marie Rose’s Delorme family members were prominent in that settlement, work that Marie Rose experienced herself. According to Grant, the women tanned hides and did “all their sewing by hand…In summer they helped in the hay-field and then in harvesting the grain.” There was a pride in the traditional work the Metis women did, for as Johnny noted, the women had “a pleasant rivalry as to who made the finest garments for their husbands.”96 Marie Rose confirmed that young Metis mothers

vied for one another in seeing who could make the prettiest Ti-ki-na-ken (baby beaded bag) which is the cradle of the papoose…We were just as proud to “show off” our bead work on the baby bag as you are to display your knitting or embroidery.97

Marie Rose understood that the handiwork made by Metis women provided a distinctive sense of pride in their culture. She continued,

Long hours were spent beading the front of vests, the cuffs of coats; and the lad with a nicely beaded buckskin shirt was proud indeed…and fringed, beautifully beaded trappings for the horses lent a distinguished look to many a mounted chief.98

Metis women did not only sew for the sense of pride it brought them, and they did not do it only for their own families. Rather, they were often organized into districts, and “sewed to lighten the domestic burden on ‘other women’ who could afford to purchase [their] goods.”99 The women of Red River, where Marie Rose spent a fair bit of her formative years, were only one example of a female economy that played a critical social role.100 Indeed, Red River became the site for the “merger of indigenous knowledge, European notions of a lady’s education, and the enduring demand for female production.”101

Nuns in convent settings often inculcated these European notions of lady’s education in Metis girls. Yet, despite the eventual importance of convent training to many Metis girls, it still was only one aspect of their education. According to Madeline Mercredi Bird, who attended the Holy Angels mission at Fort Chipewyan, her grandmother deserved the credit for teaching her practical skills, such as learning to “stitch birchbark baskets.” Bird explained that her grandmother “got along well with nature and nature gave her all the important things she needed.” She credited her grandmother not only with providing tools for survival but concluded that she taught her to “make life more pleasant with flowers, decoration and fancy work on clothing.”102 Not unlike Bird, Marie Rose credited much of her own knowledge of traditional Metis handiwork to her mother,103 writing,

The lessons I learned by mother’s side were later put into use when my hand-made buckskin gloves were much sought after by the early settlers of our community, from Macleod to Pincher Creek.104

While Marie Rose’s mother believed it important to give her daughters the education of the fur trade and life on the plains, like many Metis mothers, she also believed her daughters needed the education provided by Roman Catholic nuns. It became the duty of the Roman Catholic Metis women to educate their children in religion. The influence of the Church was always an important aspect of Metis life.105 Writing in the context of her discussions of her time in the convent, Marie Rose made special note to “pay tribute to the memory of my mother, who…so enriched our lives with the education we received.”106

While it does appear that Marie Rose’s mother had carried on as an independent trader for a time by herself as a widow, she did remarry, and this eventually led to a change of lifestyle for Marie Rose for a few years. When Cuthbert and Marie Delorme Gervais ventured out to freight for the HBC, they took along Marie Rose’s two brothers and a younger sister.107 However, Marie Delorme Gervais took this opportunity to “enter sister Liza and me at St. Boniface boarding school.”108 Marie Rose was nine years old when she entered the convent at St. Boniface to be educated by the Grey Nuns. While Marie Rose’s granddaughter, Jock Carpenter, believed her grandmother was at the convent for two years,109 Marie Rose herself wrote that she attended for four years. According to the records consulted, this is a more probable time span, and likely happened between 1872 and 1876.110

Even four years would have made an important impact on the young Marie Rose. Several authors have highlighted the desire of French missionaries to assimilate their charges to French and Roman Catholic culture.111 It is more difficult to determine the curricula for Roman Catholic girls who attended the convent schools than it is for the daughters of HBC families, who more typically attended schools such as that operated by Miss Davis in Red River. However, there are traces of information about the education Marie Rose received at the convent. For example, in 1826, Father Provencher wrote that a farmer’s wife had been hired to teach the girls at school to “work the flax and [buffalo] wool” (likely in relation to the short-lived Buffalo Wool Company operating in Red River at the suggestion of John Pritchard). It is also known that the nuns viewed sewing as a priority, and that several excelled at floral embroidery.112 The floral patterns used by the Metis women became distinctive because the schools in fur trade country not only served as “distribution points for European designs and sewing techniques” but were “also moulded by local artistic traditions.” As well, the moccasins and other Indigenous clothing long remained essential items for survival in the West.113

There are other sources that shed light on the curricula used by the Grey Nuns. For example, Sara Riel’s notebooks and letters indicated that the girls learned to spin, knit, and sew.114 While girls at the day schools, which opened in 1844, learned reading, religion, writing, and domestic science, the girls who went to the boarding school, which began operating in 1853, also learned French, English, music, painting, history, and mathematics. It is true that Sara attended between 1858 and 1866, and took her vows in 1868, prior to Marie Rose’s attendance. Yet, despite the different attendance dates, both Marie Rose and Sara likely enjoyed a comprehensive curriculum for the time, in addition to learning the handcrafts listed in Sara’s diaries.

By the time Marie Rose was sent to the convent, the nuns had been at Red River for some time. The goal of the “worthy followers of Marguerite d’Youville, Foundress of the Sisters of Charity of Montreal,” who had ventured west in canoes guided by voyageurs, was to “do good,” for they believed that “the whole country would change if only [they] could put the sisters everywhere.”115 The arrival of the Grey Nuns to Red River coincided with the arrival of Euro-North American women who were to become wives of HBC men and Protestant clergy. In fact, George Simpson, who, like others, discarded his various Indigenous partners, finally in favour of a European one, was very supportive of the Grey Nuns establishing a presence in Red River. The support offered to the incoming nuns by authorities in Red River was assured, no doubt because, like the other Euro-North American women who were beginning to arrive in Red River, the nuns symbolized piety, purity, and domesticity, qualities that were becoming more valuable to company officers in the North West as they sought ways to further their careers.

Not long after their arrival the nuns welcomed students from among the “Saulteaux, Métis and Sioux.”116 Plans were soon underway to build a new convent that would occupy two floors and a chapel,117 along with a boarding house for future students such as Marie Rose. The Roman Catholic Church undoubtedly hoped to prepare its young charges to be wives and mothers of large families.118 Also, those Metis who sent their daughters to be educated at the convent in Red River were often among the wealthier. Yet the nuns and their charges still struggled under difficult conditions. The nuns were forced to adapt quickly to what would have been rudimentary conditions, in comparison to their previous lifestyles in Montreal. They were soon involved in all aspects of securing living quarters and procuring country food supplies, no doubt enduring great suffering, while literally “putting their hands to the plow.” It was expected that the girls, even if they might be daughters of the wealthier families, would partake in arduous physical labour alongside the nuns. Despite inherent challenges, the fact that most of their students were drawn from the farmer/merchant/trader class, and that the central mission was to educate the Metis to a sedentary lifestyle,119 the work of the Grey Nuns was more likely to succeed as buffalo herds disappeared.

Despite any success on the part of the nuns, by the time Marie Rose was sent to the convent school, there was concern that the missions would have to be reduced in the West when subsidies from France were affected by war costs.120 At times surviving on dry meat, black bread, and potatoes, it was little wonder that some of the nuns became ill.121 Little wonder, too, that some of the students became ill. However, piety would prevail among the nuns, and, by necessity, among their charges. One report claims, “Mother McMullen was especially impressed with the joy and happiness which reigned in the convent despite extreme poverty.”122 Marie Rose was to become familiar with poverty not only at the convent but also at times as an adult, and she reflected some of the piety of the nuns.

Whatever the funding restraints for the convents in the 1830s, Marie Rose received a substantial education in the 1870s compared to many other Metis girls of her time. In addition to an academic curriculum, Marie Rose learned to play musical instruments, very likely at the convent. There is evidence of some musical training or perhaps music reading in a photograph of Marie Rose as an older woman playing the accordion. As well, Marie Rose wrote that, on her many visits to Waterton Lakes National Park to visit Kootenai Brown, the first park warden, and his Cree wife, Ni-ti-mous, she accompanied Brown on the violin, as he sang his favourite song, which happened to be a well-known Metis folksong, “Red River Valley.”123

Marie Rose was under the tutelage of the Grey Nuns just after the fighting in 1869–1870 in which her uncles were involved. The meticulous journals kept by the nuns demonstrate some sympathy for the Metis cause. Notes in the diaries indicate that prayers for Ambroise Lépine’s acquittal, after he was charged with the shooting of Thomas Scott, were a regular occurrence at the convent.124 In fact, Marie Rose would still be in the convent very near the time when the trial of Lépine was under way in 1873. In addition to prayers for Lépine, diaries from the Saint Boniface convent at various times from the 1870s to the 1880s indicate that prayers were recited regularly for Louis Riel and his various supporters (who included some of Marie Rose’s family).125

While it would certainly have been common to pray for all sinners and the condemned, several letters written by some of the Grey Nuns at Red River, express support for the Metis provisional government. Bishop Taché’s own secretary went so far in one of her letters as to say, “Louis Riel has been chosen by God to save his country.”126 Marie Rose’s obedience to the Church was still evident later in her correspondence with Archbishop Taché,127 and suggests that, during her time at the convent, she likely obeyed the calls to prayer and may have even felt some allegiance, as did many of the nuns, to the Metis cause and to Riel. The support for the provisional government witnessed at the convent by young Metis girls, in addition to the knowledge that their own families were “on the outside,” with their livelihoods threatened, may have inspired some solidarity with the Metis in general, and to their own families in particular. It could also be, though, that the young girls at the convent were somewhat confused and divided, as much of Red River was at the time.128

The divisions in Red River led Louis Riel to choose from among the merchant/trader class when he formed his Exovedate Council. Many of those chosen had family members with a long history of involvement in the earlier conflicts in Red River.129 Thus, it is understandable that Riel would choose one of Urbain Delorme Sr.’s sons as a member of the Exovedate, and Gabriel Dumont would choose another to serve as one of his soldiers.130 Urbain Sr. had been active during the Sayer Trial, then on the Council of Assiniboia, and then in representing the concerns of the population that opposed the possible transfer of their land to the Dominion of Canada by the HBC. Urbain Delorme Sr. had been among the group of Metis traders and hunters who originally joined with William Dease in 1860 to articulate their Metis rights, gleaned as descendants of the Indigenous people and first residents of the area. In reality, Dease was politically active for Metis rights at a time when some note that Louis Riel was more concerned with asserting French and Roman Catholic rights.131

In 1869–1870, when Riel eventually emerged as the leader of the Metis to challenge Central Canadian expansionists, Marie Rose’s uncle, Joseph Delorme, was living with his father, Urbain Sr.132 Joseph Delorme was involved in the fighting, as was Marie Rose’s uncle Norbert, who served on Riel’s Exovedate Council. Marie Rose’s sister was married to George Ness, who served as justice of the peace, and was arrested and held by the Metis fighters. Marie Rose’s uncle Donald Ross was killed in the fighting as one of Riel’s soldiers, and her uncle and aunt, John and Rose Pritchard, were held as prisoners by Big Bear and his people. The fighting between the Metis and the incoming government was devastating for many of Marie Rose’s kin and drove a wedge between family members, likely leaving young Marie Rose to struggle with a Metis identity difficult to reconcile.

Indeed, it was not long after Marie Rose left the conflict of Red River and the convent in 1876 when her family encountered a “big, raw-boned Norwegian, of very fair complexion,” named Charlie Smith.133 According to her granddaughter, upon their first meeting, Charlie had decided that Marie Rose would make an ideal partner to complement his own nomadic lifestyle on the plains. Carpenter wrote that, as Marie Rose and her sister Elise

fetched water, washed the tin plates, and then prepared the teepees for the night…[and] cooked for the next day’s journey…stooping to stir the roots cooking over the fire…keen senses told her she was being watched.134

Carpenter continued that every time Marie Rose “looked across the fire, the trader nodded to her and smiled.”135 Moving on after that first encounter with Charlie, Marie Rose and her family had “roamed the prairie for three or four weeks, killing buffalos for our winter supply of meat, and then, choosing a suitable place we settled down for the winter…there would be several families wintering together.”136

By the time Charlie found the Delorme family for his second visit, they were at their winter home. It would have been clear to Charlie that the survival of the Delorme family relied on the skills of every member. He would have had an appreciation for the fact that Marie Rose was quite adept and familiar with what needed to be done to ensure winter survival on the open prairie. Marie Rose explained these skills, writing that “all set to work cutting logs, putting up shacks, and plastering them with mud and hay.” She went on to describe the construction of her Delorme family’s winter home:

The windows and doors were of parchment, made from fawn skins, which were scraped very clean of hair and flesh and then stretched very, very thin. This made very good doors and windows. The fire place was also made of mud and hay. Turf was used for roofing.137

No doubt Marie Rose not only observed but helped build this winter home. It is also likely that, by the time of their meeting, even though he may have been aware of impending change in the economy, Charlie still believed that a Metis girl with experience on the trail would be an asset.

Marie Rose provided details of her first encounters and “courtship” with Charlie Smith, who appeared to her to be a “big trader,” with “lots of carts, horses and…four men working for him.”138 As was the custom in many Indigenous societies, it was not Marie Rose who was courted, for Charlie “invited my father and mother to his camp. He had a supply of liquor and he offered some to my people, they were both fond of their drink.”139 Shortly after her first encounter with Charlie in 1877, at the age of sixteen, Marie Rose was “traded” to this stranger, who was approximately seventeen years older than her, for the sum of fifty dollars, paid to her mother.

There is a stirring excerpt worthy of quoting in its entirety, since it sheds some light on the fear Marie Rose felt at Charlie’s “proposal”:

As we neared the house, the three of us hurried real fast, and then Charlie caught hold of me, saying something. I was so frightened I knew not what his words were, but just cried out, “Yes, yes, let me go!” Where upon he kissed me and loosed his hold. I ran like a wild antelope trying to catch up with my sister and brother before they entered the house. I was still trembling with fear as we entered the door, for we girls were not allowed alone with men…“Oh, say Mother,” I cried, “you know that white man…he grabbed me and began to talk…But first he kissed me.” So ended my courting days.140

Marie Rose then went on to explain the ensuing transaction between her mother and Charlie:

The next day, this big Norwegian trader, with his flat sleigh and jingling harness, drove up to our house. He was warmly greeted by my mother and step-father. There was much pleasant conversation between the three, and then Smith asked my mother for permission to marry me. As she looked surprised he said, “I asked her yesterday, and she said, ‘Yes’”. “But I didn’t know what he was saying,” I shouted at them. It made no difference. It was settled between my parents and Charlie right then and Charlie gave my mother a present of Fifty dollars. Was I not then sold for that sum? After Charlie left mother called me to her, “Come here, Marie Rose, you promised to marry that man”…I tried over and over again to explain, but it was useless.141

In regard to the actual marriage ceremony of the young and frightened Marie Rose, preparations had proceeded and the permission of the bishop was sought so Charlie, a Protestant, would be allowed to marry this young Roman Catholic girl.142 Although she spoke of the broken heart her marriage arrangement brought her, Marie Rose still acknowledged that “they” took great care of her, when preparing her for the wedding, treating her like a “little queen.” She was wrapped in buffalo robes and provided with a driver to take her in a flat sleigh to meet Bishop Grandin in St. Albert. When camping en route, Marie Rose would wait in the sleigh until camp was set up and the teepee warm, to which she was carried.

Marie Rose indicates that it was Charlie who made provision for her transportation to the settlement of St. Albert where her marriage was to take place. The way Marie Rose was “handled” on the journey suggests Charlie viewed the Delorme family with respect. While Marie Rose was apparently well accommodated on the journey, she still wrote that she

didn’t enjoy all this attention. I would rather have been out playing in the deep snow with my brothers and sister. To such an extent was obedience enforced among the Traders’ children.143

Despite Charlie’s apparent consideration for Marie Rose during the trip, both she and her granddaughter wrote of the fear Marie Rose experienced when she realized she must obey her mother and, as a “prairie child,” marry a man she “hardly knew, much less loved, and who seemed so old to a child of sixteen.”144

There is no indication from Marie Rose that many of the Metis wedding traditions were followed, either before or after the ceremony. There is evidence, though, that there was much merriment at typical Metis weddings, with the entire family taking part in the festivities. In settlements such as St. Albert, where the bride was transported by sleigh as Marie Rose had been, gun blasts and shouts of joy typically greeted the couple upon their exit from the church. After the wedding feast of wild game, bannock, pemmican, cake, pastries, and wine, fiddling and dancing were the norm, and for many days to follow. It is not clear if Marie Rose’s marriage was celebrated in this way, nor if the couple were wrapped in the traditional sash.145 The details of Marie Rose’s wedding are impossible to know because she did not record any of them in any of the surviving documents.

Acceptance of her new situation did not come easily, for, as Marie Rose wrote, “That year was the most unhappy one of all my life. Day after day I went away by myself and cried.” There was apparently only one comfort and that was that her “parents travelled with us all that summer.”146 In her unpublished writing, while Marie Rose expressed relief that her mother and family continued to travel with them, she wrote quite frankly and openly about her perception of the arranged marriage. Still exhibiting resignation as an adult, Marie Rose wrote, “So I, a little girl of sixteen years, was forced into a marriage with a man twenty years my senior, and of whom I knew nothing.”147 While Marie Rose could play at being a child during the day, she wrote,

when night came and I was alone with my stranger husband, alone in a camp of our own, such fear seized me, that I bound my clothes about me with raw hide ropes.148

The young bride was aware of the embarrassment her initial behaviour was causing her husband, for she wrote that Charlie was told by others in the camp to “Beat her into submission.”149

Although Charlie may have been viewed unfavourably by some for not acting on this advice, Marie Rose wrote that Charlie was “patient and determined to win me through love.”150 For the most part, Marie Rose wrote very little about Charlie that does not relate to what might be seen as difficult behaviour, such as his drinking or being away from home. However, the fact that she wrote in this one instance that Charlie was determined to win her through love suggests Charlie may not always have been the hard man he has been described as by at least one scholar, who wrote that Marie Rose “endura un mari dur et un gros buveur.”151 In the end, though, when asked by her granddaughter later in life whether she loved Charlie, Marie Rose still responded simply, “What’s love got to do with it?”152

Researcher Maggie MacKellar believes Marie Rose’s text demonstrates a double betrayal on the part of her mother, “for not only was she sold into marriage, but her husband was a white man.”153 MacKellar may be correct, given that Marie Rose noted Charlie’s ethnicity when she was imploring her mother not to allow the marriage to proceed. As Marie Rose explained her first encounter with Charlie to her mother, she told her, “you know that white man, Charlie Smith, well he grabbed me and began to talk,” to which her mother replied, “What did Mo-ni-ash (white man) say?”154 His ethnicity rather than his age was the only characteristic Marie Rose used to describe Charlie in this first discussion with her mother.

There may have been several circumstances that influenced Marie Delorme Gervais to trade her daughter for fifty dollars, specifically to a Euro-North American man. Whether or not she was financially secure after the death of her husband, Marie Delorme Gervais may have felt it best to have one less mouth to feed. As Marie Rose wrote, the land her father owned prior to his death on the “White Horse Plains…was the heritage of her younger brother.”155 Marie Delorme Gervais may also have recognized what scholars have identified, specifically the value of an Indigenous daughter at different times during the fur trade era.156 In this respect, whatever the cultural basis of bride purchase, Marie Rose’s mother might have been pragmatically considering the value of a Euro-North American man “marrying into” the family at these uncertain times.

Marie Rose may have understood some of the reasoning for her mother’s choice, writing, “them days a fur trader was a big man.”157 She recognized Charlie’s wealth immediately, as well as his trading abilities, noting,

From the size of his outfit-carts and horses—we knew him to be a “big trader” He had four riders working for him…Trader Smith always carried with him a good supply of liquor—and, I must confess, more than his “permit” called for…Trader Smith invited my parents over to taste his liquid refreshments, with the result that we camped here all night.158

Although there is no record of such a trade in the marriage of Marie Delorme Gervais’s other daughters, Madelaine and Elise Delorme both married Euro-North-American men. Both of these Euro-North American men appeared quite competent in navigating a new economy, with one operating as a justice of the peace and the other a skilled carpenter. Ness, the justice of the peace, was an Englishman who supported the Canadian government in 1869–1870. The carpenter, Ludger Gareau, a Frenchman from Quebec, was considered part of the “small bourgeoisie” that established themselves in Batoche before the resistance to central government encroachment. While openly opposed to Riel in 1885, many of these bourgeoisies were believed to secretly support him but found reason to be away during the conflict. In Gareau’s case, he was in Quebec at the time. While he did indicate his support for Riel when interviewed by the local newspaper in Pincher Creek years later,159 it appears Gareau was astute enough to be silent about that support at the time of the conflict.

While Marie Rose’s sisters both eventually settled in Pincher Creek, it was the young bride, bought for fifty dollars, who first settled in 1880 “near the little stream now called Pincher Creek.” Marie Rose wrote that the area was “teaming with roaming Indians.” Trips to Fort Macleod twice per year for provisions took a week’s travel time. Remarking on these journeys, Marie Rose noted they took the time to visit with many friends and that “so many of the white men had married young squaws,”160 a situation that would have been very similar to circumstances during the height of the fur trade. Other similarities for Marie Rose during her early years of marriage included food and supplies, which continued to be much the same as those accessed during the fur trade, except that herds of roaming cattle now replaced buffalo. By this time, Marie Rose appeared to have come to terms with her marriage arrangement, writing that, despite living in a one-room log home as a young bride, while “dishes were few, food was plentiful.”161

The one-room log house that served as the young bride’s home, on the land that she and Charlie called Jughandle Ranch, was constructed with a “roof made of bark. The chinks between the logs were filled with mud.” There was no flooring in the house and the windows were constructed of “small bits of glass.” In fact, her first home as a married woman was not much different than that which Marie Rose would have helped to build when her family traversed the plains. It featured dirt floors, no beds, boxes nailed to the walls serving as cupboards, and it was situated where prairie chickens could be snared from the door, or fish caught from the nearby Pincher Creek.162

Marie Rose’s first home as a young bride was likely even more rudimentary than that of her parents in Red River. According to the land records of Jughandle Ranch, the house and barn were originally “all one.” Despite the fire that destroyed their first home in 1926,163 there is one surviving photo of Marie Rose and her young family standing in front of it. Although material possessions were sparse in the first home she shared with her husband, throughout Marie Rose’s manuscripts, she expressed a sense of pride in her role as a new wife, a role for which she earned the title “Queen of the Jughandle.” Despite her initial protestations about her marriage arrangement, it appears Marie Rose eventually came to accept her destiny and the idea of a bride price.

Even though Marie Rose was clear that there was no love or courtship in her own marriage arrangement, she subsequently wrote of the First Nation custom of arranging marriages for daughters as though it were a foreign custom of a strange and savage people. Speaking as she would of a foreign people, whose customs were not in any way similar to her own, Marie Rose wrote,

There was never any love making, no courting among them. If any young couple was fit to marry, the parents would choose the mate, no marriage ceremony. They would tell them to go together, whether they loved one another or not…They had to obey their parents.164

Apart from the marriage ceremony, the description Marie Rose provides for Indigenous marriages differs very little from her own. The circumstances of Marie Rose’s marriage were common enough in the North West (so common that Marie Rose likely understood them well), as many fur traders sought young Indigenous women who possessed indispensable economic skills and social networks.165 Yet there is no indication from Marie Rose that she recognized the similarities of her own marriage arrangement with those of other Indigenous women, at least in her written words intended for consumption by a Euro-North American society.

In addition to the valuable skills she possessed and that elicited a bride price, Marie Rose was born into a long-standing and elite Metis family, one with considerable status in the fur trade before 1870. However, those family connections extended to include ardent supporters of Metis nationhood, economic independence in the fur trade, political freedom at the transfer, and, finally, the Metis war against the Macdonald Government.

Thus, while the male members of her Delorme family network would no longer be an asset, Marie Rose was a valuable commodity, and she and Charlie may well have continued to live the nomadic lifestyle for which she was so well trained had it not been for the changes that were forced upon the Indigenous people as the buffalo dwindled and more Euro-North American settlers arrived. When Marie Rose exercised her only option and told her mother that, yes, she would go, and thus began her life as a married woman, she no doubt had little idea how much she would have to adapt. On the one hand, she would necessarily continue to rely on the practical skills she had learned from her Metis mother and father, skills that eventually earned her the name “Buckskin Mary.” On the other hand, she would have to navigate a changing society, which grew determined to solidify racial boundaries.

Even though she became a respected pioneer in her new community, Marie Rose continued to rely on the social culture of the Metis she learned as a young girl. While she spoke little of those social aspects, at an advanced age, the old buffalo hunter, Norbert Welsh, recalled that what he liked best was to remember the exciting buffalo hunts, the long caravans of Red River carts, and every one of the old songs he enjoyed on the trails. These songs had specific cultural meaning, as they recorded the impressions of the Metis when they travelled across the plains. The Metis songs commemorated perilous buffalo hunts, holiday festivities, births, deaths, and marriages.166 Indeed, in the only interview recorded of Marie Rose Delorme Smith, when she was ninety-five years old, she spontaneously sang a few choruses of one of those old Metis songs, “Red River Halfbreed.”167 Not only did Marie Rose clearly remember and cherish the social aspects of her Metis culture but she also had to rely on and perfect the social networking skills she had learned from her Delorme family network by expanding it to include fictive kin, so that she could function as the Queen of Jughandle Ranch and contribute social capital to her partnership with Charlie Smith.