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Metis and Surveying: Tensions Regarding Place

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Metis and Surveying: Tensions Regarding Place Metis and Surveying: Tensions Regarding Place MICHAEL M. POMEDLI St. Thomas More College University of Saskatchewan Commenting on the strengths of William Kurelek's prairie paintings, Francois-Marc Gagnon (1991:viii, ix) notes the feelings of vastness and boundlessness that they elicit. Such are a writer's and a painter's responses. How did earlier peoples respond to that same immensity? In this essay, I want to remain in the prairie context and examine two approaches to place. The first approach is homey, showing a generally lived and contextualized stance toward the environment. For our study, the attitudes and life of the Metis reflect this stance. The second approach considers place cognitively, takes a position above or about place and purports to be objective. Such a stance has a long history and is one of the ramifications of the development of western science and technology. In this paper the surveying system rep­ resents such an approach. While these two approaches to place have many different aspects, such as political, economic, and social, I will concentrate predominantly on understanding the mindset of each, highlighting the for- getfulness of the lived reality in the theory and practice of surveying as evidenced by politicians, expansionists, and surveyors. 1. Metis Approach to Place There is no better way to understand Metis perspectives on place than to listen to their reminiscences. That great Metis storyteller, Louis Goulet, recalls times in the mid and late 19th century when his people, steeped in the old, were standing on the threshold of the new: Normally we went to Wood Mountain, but when the buffalo drew back into the area of the Cypress Hills, we followed them. Finally, later on, when they took refuge in the rough country of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado, it was along the Missouri River we went to find the few remaining herds. Now that was a great life! Cre mardi gras! When I think about it I can easily understand why the old-timers loved it so much. Just imagine! a huge country able to feed a population with no more effort than hunting the 373 374 POMEDLI plentiful game. Ah! what a splendid picture I'd paint of that incomparable time of freedom and plenty, if only I had the will and talent to do it! Try to imagine a large group of families, all of them close friends, many with blood ties, going off for an entire season not leaving a single care behind them! (Charette 1976:16) And then later on, less nostalgically, and more reflectively, Goulet contin­ ues: We in the very youngest generation had no idea that this happy existence, full of wide open spaces, with every kind of freedom and no restrictions at all, was passing like childhood, like an adolescence full of beautiful promises, fading away in the space of a night. We didn't know that the modern civilization we welcomed so eagerly was going to cost us so much, so soon! (Charette 1976:27-28) Goulet's memoirs recount historical facts that slide into the realm of idyllic myth. Suddenly, it seems, the wonderful realities of freedom and space vanish. His days become ambivalent, peppered occasionally with fascination for modern technology, but more consistently now, pained with the loss of a former way of life. Life tied to the buffalo hunt becomes more tenuous and then dies away as surveyors measure the vast, open prairie spaces. He reflects on his Metis world paradoxically both closing in around him and receding. Psychologically and physically it is dark. The past and present are halted; the future is scary and uncanny. Confined to a hospital, his physical vigor and his faculties waning, unable to see beyond his eyes, he has to discover the internal spaces of his faith and memories. Let us savour the nostalgia a little more. Although the quasi-nomadic Metis life appears quite aimless, it has its own regimen tied to the buffalo hunt. Their societal laws come from nature as the maturity and location of the buffalo beckon a response. Goulet's happy reply to such beckoning roots him in the earth and nourishes his body and mind. The welcome ties to the buffalo expand his imagination, stimulate his sense of adventure and bind him to his kin. Goulet's freedom appears to be limitless, but it has a fulfilling structure and intent. He is not a pitiable wayfarer, although his space is often loosely bounded, permitting an exuberant celebration for bounty freely given, gifts spontaneously shared. 2. Dominion of Canada's and Surveyors' Approach to Place The second approach to place is that of the surveying process. That elusive idea and reality, civilization, frequently centers on various forms of ordering. In western Canada, the expansionists and the Dominion of Canada deemed imperative a universal and systematic ordering process. METIS AND SURVEYING 375 Canadian writer James G. MacGregor captures the marvels of the tech­ nical feat of surveying western Canada in Vision of an Ordered Land, The Story of the Dominion Land Survey. Born in Scotland, homesteading in western Canada and pursuing the profession of engineering, MacGregor is well qualified to give an appreciative account: The feat of surveying the fertile lands of the prairie provinces in a checker­ board fashion is one of the outstanding accomplishments of the early Cana­ dian government. As an example of the extension of a precise and uniform plan of survey over an immense area, no other system in the world equals it. And no other system assembled, trained, and directed such a body of dedicated surveyors. The first survey of Canada's prairies under the newly devised Domin­ ion Lands System got under way in 1869 and within a few decades all their vast arable area had been parceled out into farm-sized quarter sections. The survey rushed forward so rapidly that within ten years some 67,000 such quarter sections had been staked out. During the succeeding ten years the boundaries of a further 382,000 quarters had been defined and by the end of 1919, the end of the first fifty-year period, when most of them had been mea­ sured out, the Dominion land surveyors had laid out some 1,110,000 quarter sections which contained a total of 178 million acres. (MacGregor 1981 :ix) MacGregor's use of the term "feat" is obviously an accolade, the perception of one cultural mindset. The impetus for marvelling is the ordering in such a precise and expeditious manner. What was perceived as external and chaotic now becomes close, closed and manageable. What was imprecise becomes measured and numbered. The surveying process has its own elan on two often intermingled lev­ els. The first level that emerges as quasi-autonomous is the theoretical one during and after the scientific revolution. This approach prizes abstraction, objectification, quantification and precision. On the second level, the sur­ veying impetus becomes concretized in the writing of surveying handbooks, in the institution of surveying, and in the new Dominion's response to chal­ lenging demands. Theory becomes practice as Canada acquires land from the Hudson Bay Company, takes stock and responsibly makes plans for it. Included in Canada's planning is the hiring of "highly trained men" guided by a seemingly inevitable surveying momentum (MacGregor 1981:x). In order to understand the theory and institutional elan of surveying, let us consider briefly three aspects of this process: 1. history and theory of surveying 2. ideologies of politicians and expansionists 3. existential considerations: surveyors, and the process of surveying 376 POMEDLI 2.1. History and Theory of Surveying In general, the surveying system arose as a response to a complex set of philosophical perspectives, historical circumstances, and technological advances. In western Canada the system grew out of modern English sur­ veying. Let us begin with the experiential demands of land ownership and management. To illustrate the difficulty of managing a less than precise measured area, consider the following description from an old parchment patent from Ohio dated March 15, 1880: On the waters of the Rocky Fork of Paint Creek, Beginning at two Sugar Trees and a poplar South seventy Degrees west two hundred and sixty poles from two Beeches, and a black Oak northwesterly corner to Benjamin Wynkoop's survey No. 3019, running North twenty Degrees West one hun­ dred poles to a Sugar Tree, white Oak and Beech, thence South seventy Degrees West two hundred and forty-seven poles to three Sugar Trees, thence South twenty Degrees East two hundred and sixty poles crossing a Branch at forty and one and eighty-six poles to three Sassafras, thence North sev­ enty Degrees East two hundred and forty-seven poles crossing a Branch at twenty poles to a Sugar Tree and three Beeches, thence North twenty De­ grees West one hundred and sixty poles crossing a Branch at sixteen poles to the Beginning. (Spreckley 1969:55) This unwieldy description for a simple four-sided parcel of 400 acres re­ sulted in more lawsuits in this district than in all of the rest of the State! European civilization in the later middle ages demanded the clear con­ ception and precise determination of boundaries. Modern English land surveying had its origins in the 16th century, brought about partly by the phenomenon of enclosing. Put simply, enclosing was the process of combin­ ing strips of open fields into larger ones and then enclosing them with fences, hedges, or other boundaries. Later, meadows, parts of the commons, and reclaimed lands were also brought into the enclosed system. This process of combining and reorganizing land from an open field into an enclosure led to many complaints and confusion over titles, rights, and quantities of land involved.
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