Historical Profile of the Great Slave Lake Area's Mixed European-Indian Ancestry Community
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Historical Profile of the Great Slave Lake Area’s Mixed European-Indian Ancestry Community by Gwynneth Jones Research and & Aboriginal Law and Statistics Division Strategic Policy Group The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Justice Canada. i Table of Contents Abstract ii Author’s Biography iii I. Executive Summary iv II. Methodology/Introduction vi III. Narrative A. First Contact at Great Slave Lake, 1715 - 1800 1 B. Mixed-Ancestry Families in the Great Slave Lake Region to 1800 12 C. Fur Trade Post Life at 1800 19 D. Development of the Fur Trade and the First Mixed-Ancestry Generation, 1800 - 1820 25 E. Merger of the Fur Trade Companies and Changes in the Great Slave Lake Population, 1820 - 1830 37 F. Fur Trade Monopoly and the Arrival of the Missionaries, 1830 - 1890 62 G. Treaty, Traders and Gold, 1890 - 1900 88 H. Increased Presence and Regulations by Persons not of Indian/ Inuit/Mixed-Ancestry Descent, 1905 - 1950 102 IV. Discussion/Summary 119 V. Suggestions for Future Research 129 VI. References VII. Appendices Appendix A: Extracts of Selected Entries in Oblate Birth, Marriage and Death Registers Appendix B: Métis Scrip -- ArchiviaNet (Summaries of Genealogical Information on Métis Scrip Applications) VIII. Key Documents and Document Index (bound separately) Abstract With the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Powley [2003] 2 S.C.R., Métis were recognized as having an Aboriginal right to hunt for food as recognized under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. In consequence, Justice Canada developed a research program designed to explore the history related to possible Métis ethnogenesis and the imposition of ‘effective European control’ in selected sites across Canada. Through the use of archival and published documents, this paper explores one of the selected geographic areas; the Great Slave Lake region of the North West Territories. This study examined the social history, demographic, and genealogical background of the Great Slave Lake European-Indian ancestry population, the distinctive cultural practices of the European-Indian ancestry group, and some possible indicators of ‘effective European control’. A detailed, chronological and thematic, historical narrative dating from the 18th century to the 20th century is presented, along with a discussion surrounding certain concepts utilized in Powley. ii Author’s Biography Gwynneth Jones is a self-employed historian whose clients include federal and provincial governments, First Nations and Métis organizations. She has been retained as an expert in several court cases dealing with Métis and First Nation claims, including R. v Powley and Powley. Her areas of specialization include the historical development and ways of life of mixed-ancestry populations, and nineteenth-century public administration. She holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from Queen's University, and a Master's degree in History from York University. iii I. Executive Summary 1. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, the Great Slave Lake area was unknown to people of European ancestry. Indian groups called by later European observers “Slavey” or “Slave”, “Chipewyan”, “Dogrib” and “Yellowknife”/”Red Knife”/”Copper Indians”, used and occupied Great Slave Lake and its vicinity. Today, these groups may be included under the general term “Dene”. Chipewyan trade brigades travelled to the Hudson Bay Company’s York Factory or Fort Prince of Wales (later Churchill) to trade furs for European goods, which they then in turn traded to other Indians around Great Slave Lake. 2. Samuel Hearne of the Hudson’s Bay Company travelled with a Chipewyan group over the frozen Great Slave Lake and down the Slave River in the winter of 1771 - 1772. By the mid-1780s, fur traders had established intermittently-operated posts on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, near the mouth of the Slave River. 3. Historical evidence suggests that a few mixed-ancestry families may have been resident in the Great Slave Lake area prior to the arrival of the traders. The fathers of these families may have been affiliated with French trading companies operating in the interior of North America, arriving at Great Slave Lake by following the Chipewyan trade brigades. Although the population of solely European ancestry of Great Slave Lake was very small in the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century, the employees of the trading companies (exclusively male) were quick to form families with local Chipewyan women. By 1800, a number of mixed-ancestry children had been born in the region, and Europeans had established a limited year-round presence centred on trade posts. 4. Gaps in the documentary record in the first two decades of the nineteenth century obscure the development of this cohort of mixed-ancestry children, but by 1820 a prominent group of locally-born mixed-ancestry adults had emerged. This group was particularly affiliated with the North West Company, which dominated trade in the area. 5. After the merger of the HBC and the North West Company in 1821, the total number of people directly employed by the fur trade was greatly reduced. Many unemployed Europeans and Canadians went home. Others, including some of mixed ancestry, stayed around Great Slave Lake, working intermittently for the HBC and/or living with Indian groups hunting and trading. 6. By the middle of the nineteenth century, missionary priests of the order of Oblates of Mary Immaculate had established a presence at a few points around Great Slave Lake. The birth and marriage records kept by these priests illustrate the establishment of a network of mixed-ancestry families around the Lake, linking people in and out of fur- trade employment, and newcomers and longtime residents. 7. Observers in the second half of the nineteenth century (priests, fur traders, and travellers) were consistent in identifying a mixed-ancestry presence around Great Slave Lake separate from the European and Indian populations. The precise characteristics of this iv population are not well-defined in the historical records reviewed for this report. Ways of life, languages spoken, and religious affiliation appeared to vary along the continuum of full-time European fur-trade employment through to “Indian” life on the land. Very generally speaking, mixed-ancestry people showed a greater tendency to seasonal or full- time wage employment than the local Indian population, more skills and knowledge of living and travelling on the land than the European population, and more geographic and occupational mobility than either. Marriage patterns also continued to emphasize the ties between mixed-ancestry families through the nineteenth century. Census and scrip records indicate that the mixed-ancestry population around Great Slave Lake was almost entirely born and raised in the Athabasca-Mackenzie district. 8. Gold strikes in the Yukon in 1897 and 1898 attracted unprecedented numbers of travellers through the Slave River and Great Slave Lake region. Intermittent North West Mounted Police patrols between Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake began in 1897. Canada concluded Treaty Eight with Indian people at Fort Smith and Fort Resolution in 1899 and 1900. Scrip was also issued to mixed-ancestry applicants. European settlement in this region was very slow to develop, and government presence was limited until after the First World War. 9. High post-war prices for furs attracted trappers of solely European ancestry to the Great Slave Lake area in 1919 and 1920, and oil strikes near Fort Norman also heightened government interest in the region. A Territorial council was appointed in 1920, and in 1921 a Territorial civil service staff was brought into Fort Smith. In the summer of 1921, Canada concluded Treaty Eleven with Indian people of Great Slave Lake. Scrip was issued in 1924. v II. Methodology/Introduction This report is the result of a successful proposal submitted under a Request for Proposals by the Department of Justice Canada, for historical research on the Great Slave Lake area’s mixed European-Indian ancestry community. The study area, according to the Request for Proposals, was as follows: ‘Study region’ or ‘the Great Slave Lake area’ is a term which, for the purposes of this study, specifically refers to the southeastern Mackenzie Drainage basin, encompassing the shores of Great Slave Lake and its southern hinterlands, with a focus on the mixed-ancestry history of the present-day areas of Rae-Edzo, NT, Fort Smith, NT, and Fort Resolution, NT. The objectives of the review, according to the Request for Proposals were: a) To conduct historical research in the study region in order to construct a neutral narrative describing the facts existent in the documentary historical record relating to the early history of mixed Indian-European or mixed Inuit-European ancestry peoples in the region. b) To collect, compile and index key, primary source documents according to the methodology and the format provided to the Contractor... The successful contractor was asked to address the following key questions in regard to the study region: 1. Identify and chart the ethnogenesis of any mixed European-Indian or European-Inuit population in the study region, including evidence of the date by which the mixed-ancestry population emerged; 2. Describe and document any of the ‘distinctive cultural’ practices, customs or traditions of the mixed-ancestry population, including what distinguished the mixed-ancestry population from European, Indian or Inuit groups existing at the time in the study region; 3. Describe and document various indicators of when ‘effective European control’ in the area might have been established. The successful contractor was also instructed to focus on primary sources while researching and writing the report, and not to include information from oral histories collected in the contemporary period or recent ethnographic observation. The contractor was also instructed not to make legal or quasi-legal determinations on issues such as whether a population was a “Metis community”, or the date of “effective European control” in the study area.