Some of you may be sitting their
thinking, “So just what IS a Métis?” Some of you may not. Some of you may
not even care.
Welcome to Métis 101.
It has been
said that the first Métis was born 9 months after the Norse tried to
colonize Newfoundland
in the 14th and 15th century. Some folks have been known to ask, “Gee I
wonder what happened to those Norse settlers?” Well—
Well, the Norse colony disappeared,
and, despite their best efforts, archeologists haven’t been able to find
enough remains to account for all of the settlers, yet when Europe’s turn
came to discover North America, they were surprised to find blue eyes on the
folks already living there. I think *that’s* a no-brainer.
Words describing people who have
Aboriginal/[fill in the blank] ancestry are many and varied.
Métis–pronounced “may-TEE”–comes from the Latin miscere, meaning “to
mix” as well as from Old French/Canadian French, meaning ‘of mixed race’
(from Late Latin mixt
cius,
mixed), and is used to describe the children of Aboriginal women and
European men.
Another term for Métis–Bois
Brule–comes from the Ojibwa word wissakodewinmi, meaning “half-burnt
woodsmen”, which described a complexion comparatively
lighter than that of the Aboriginal side of the family. Other terms
include Country-born, Black Scots, Métis anglais, The Flower Bead Word
People, The Buffalo People, Breeds, and Half-breeds. But, to quote The
Metis Home page at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/4832/metis.html “One consistent
characteristic that describes the Metis is implicit in the name the Cree
gave them o-tee-paym-soo-wuk, which means “their own boss” or “people
who own themselves”.
The Métis call themselves The
Forgotten People.
Seems pretty straight forward,
doesn’t it?
Now we get into the interpretation
of just what exactly qualifies one as Métis.
Speaking historically, you can get
a pretty good idea from the above definitions above, but to simplify things,
Métis went from being French/Cree, to French/Cree from Red River, and now to
being of European and Aboriginal descent.
Currently there are four main
schools of thought
One maintains that to be Métis one
must have a French parent and a Cree parent. Period. End of sentence.
Another says that you can be Métis
only if you descend from someone from Red River. To prove your Red River
connections, your ancestor had to have been eligible for and/or received
Script.
Yet others say you have to be of
French/Cree ancestry AND trace back to Red River.
The last is the one that those who
descend from the fur trappers, like the branch of us who descend from
Etienne Pépin and his Aboriginal wife, Isabelle Kwantlen, and Alfred John
Houston and his Aboriginal wife Sophia Giordan (son of E & I married
daughter of A & S). Though Etienne was Canadian French, he may very well
have been Métis, through his paternal grandmother, Madeleine Lajeunesse,
Etienne’s son, Simon, definitely WAS Métis, as was Simon’s wife Emma Sarah
Houston.
The more I learn about the Métis,
the better I understand the branch of the family I come from. The
descendants of Donald Louis Peppan and Catherine Marie Stuckey might want to
take a read through the web pages that start at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/4832/metis.html, then go by
http://www.vancouvermetis.com/ for the application forms. That would
be, um, Diane, Kathy, La Donna, Jim, Sherry, Kevin, Christopher, Sue, Frank,
Bob, Robert, Rachel, Jason, Nicole, Marcus, Patty, Jennifer, Buddy, Robbyn,
Joe, Don, and Jim; for the same reason I qualify, you all qualify. Contact
me with any and all questions.
Being Métis is very very odd thing,
especially having been raised in the US, where one’s ethnic heritage is
categorized by what ever the Politically Correct Term of the Month is.
There are many varying shades of this and that, including Pacific Islander,
but when you get to folks whose ancestors watched wave after wave Old World
explorers discover their home, you either are or you aren’t; in the US 51%
of a person’s ancestry must be Native American to qualify one as a Native
American. Some of the smaller recognized tribes can go lower; Grays Harbor
goes as low as 1/32, as do the Mono of Northern California. Yes, I said
“recognized”; some tribes are not, even though they’ve been living in the
same spot since before the Eric the Red said, “Ég furða ef land er til the
vestur-? Hvaða the Helvíti, við fara útlit*” AND meet the blood quantum
requirements.
The US also doesn’t recognize the
Métis, except with words and attitudes that made Métis who grew up in the
first half of the 20th century bury their ancestry, and bury it deep to save
the following generations the shame and humiliation of their ancestry. This
was true with my grandfather and his three children. Métis is a Canadian
thing.
From the get go, the Métis were
there. Not long after Norse went a Viking and stumbled onto Newfoundland.
When France started a colony in the New World in 1608, the French men coming
to prepare the colony didn’t bring women with them. Some of the folks
living in what is now eastern Canada weren’t particularly enthused about the
new neighbours, and worked real hard to run them off. Others thought that
maybe the new neighbours might be a cool thing. And you *know* that about 9
months later there were children born whose complexions were comparatively
lighter than that of their Mothers.
When the Hudson’s Bay Company
arrived on the scene, they used Métis guides, and their employees made
liaisons with Aboriginal women to better the trade between the HBC and the
local folks. These were most often Country Marriages, or “marriage after
the fashion of the country”, with no church officials involved. The man or
the woman could go any time s/he chose, but most often it was the men,
moving on to another area, and leaving his country wife and any children
behind—though some took their sons and had them educated back home in the
Old World.
By the middle of the 19th century,
both Aboriginal and Métisse wives were out of fashion. In the 19th century
the status of most women was based solely upon those of their husbands. As
the trapped out areas became settled, European women started to arrive,
bringing with them organized religion, which is why some folks said that HBC
stood not for the Hudson’s Bay Company but for “Here Before Christ” (They’re
also referred to as the Horny Boys Club, but I won’t mention that here,
‘cause it isn’t polite).
It was a dicey thing for the early
Men of the Church, most especially for those who maintained the then popular
belief that Aboriginal people and even some Métis had no souls and were no
better than animals, so the trapper/traders who genuinely wanted to make
their country marriages into “church” marriages could not. Others, like
Fathers Demers and Blanchet, who came west in the 1840s (some 20+ years
after the first fur traders entered the area), said something to the effect
of, “Of course we can see how devoted to each other you are and look at al
your fine children. And we understand that you have married according to
the customs of your wife’s people, but-- well … I don’t suppose you would
like— but no—well, maybe you would like to celebrate your many happy years
together with a Catholic ceremony…?” And yes, as a matter of fact, the
families of both Demers and Blanchet DO appear in the Monster Data Base (as
does the families of Father Cyprien Tanguay, Drouin, and René Jetté).
Some one some where told me that I
might make some un-friends with my research on the First Families of
Québec. I asked why. The reply was: “Because some of them are not as white
as they claim to be.” But you know…
Time has come to stop hiding.
* “I wonder if there
land is to the west? What the Hell, let’s go look.”
