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“LES GENS DE CETTE PLACE”: OBLATES AND THE EVOLVING CONCEPT OF MÉTIS AT ÎLE-À-LA-CROSSE, 1845-1898 Timothy Paul Foran Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In partial fulfilment of the requirements For the PhD degree in history Department of History Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Timothy Paul Foran, Ottawa, Canada, 2011 i Abstract This dissertation examines the construction and evolution of categories of indigeneity within the context of the Oblate (Roman Catholic) apostolate at Île-à-Crosse in present- day north-western Saskatchewan between 1845 and 1898. While focusing on one central mission station, this study illuminates broad historical processes that informed Oblate perceptions and impelled their evolution over a fifty-three-year period. In particular, this study illuminates processes that shaped Oblate concepts of sauvage and métis. It does this through a qualitative analysis of missionary correspondence, mission records and published reports. In the process, this dissertation challenges the orthodox notion that Oblate commentators simply discovered and described a singular, empirically existing and readily identifiable Métis population. Rather, this dissertation contends that Oblates played an important role in the conceptual production of les métis. ii Acknowledgments I have incurred many debts over the long and eventful years during which this dissertation came into being. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Nicole St-Onge (University of Ottawa) for drawing my attention to the Oblate records of Île-à-la-Crosse and for supervising the research and writing of this dissertation. The latter undertaking required prodigious doses of positivity, forbearance and good humour... et pour ceci je la remercie sincèrement. I am also indebted to those scholars and facilitators at the University of Ottawa who provided me with continual support, advice and encouragement: Dr. Richard Connors, Dr. Béatrice Craig, Suzanne Dalrymple, Dr. Corinne Gaudin, Francine Laramée and Dr. Vasilis Vourkoutiotis. Funding for this study was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and also by the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and the Department of History at the University of Ottawa. A number of archivists and librarians facilitated my research through their extensive knowledge and their generous provision of access to information. I am especially beholden to Gilles Lesage and Jacinthe Duval of the Société historique de Saint-Boniface (Centre du patrimoine), Diane Lamoureux of the Provincial Archives of Alberta (Grandin Archives), Jean-Marie LeBlanc of the Centre de recherche en histoire religieuse du Canada, Father André Dubois of the Archives Deschâtelets, Sister Julienne Massé and François Nadeau of the Archives des Sœurs Grises de Montréal, Ellen Alers of the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the staff of Library and Archives Canada. iii Another set of debts is owing to family members, friends and colleagues who provided me with valuable feedback and insight, boundless moral support and much- needed perspective. I am particularly grateful to Peter Bangs, Johanne Cloutier, Norbert Desautels, Dr. Kouky Fianu, Hardy Firla, Ken Foran, Margaret Foran, Mike Foran, Ron Foran, Dr. Brenda Macdougall, Dr. Gretchen MacMillan, Dr. Donald B. Smith (aka le grand chef), and Neil Soiseth. I have benefitted enormously from their wisdom and their kindness during the research and writing phases of this dissertation. My final debts are the largest. They are, in fact, too large ever to be repaid. I can only acknowledge them with heartfelt thanks. My dear friend, Dr. Sylvie Perrier, was unfailingly present and engaged during the hardest stretches of the writing process; indeed, this process would not have come to fruition without her. My sister, Jill Foran, (who has done more to promote awareness of Canadian history than I could ever hope to do) was an untiring and uncomplaining sounding board for all of my best ideas. My parents, Frank and Pat Foran, were pillars of support throughout my entire doctoral programme (not to mention the twenty-five years preceding it). Their love, encouragement and wisdom have been invaluable to me. Most importantly, my beloved wife, Olivia Faucher, has lived with this dissertation for as long as she has lived with me. With acumen and patience, she navigated my weird musings about clergymen, my frequent bouts of frustration and gloom, and my long periods of seclusion and self-absorption. Olivia contributed generously to the making of this work through her keen historical insight, her mastery of subtilités de langue, and her technological expertise. She gave meaning to this iv dissertation, and meaning to my life while I wrote it. I therefore dedicate the following pages to her, with a simple assurance: Nous pouvons enfin marier nos saisons. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 From sauvage to métis: The evolution of missionary-made categories at Île-à-la-Crosse, 1845-1898 CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................. 33 “Ad propria”: Saint-Jean-Baptiste in an evolving mission network CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................. 99 From “ami sincère” to “haute et puissante autocrate”: Oblate perceptions of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Île-à-la-Crosse CHAPTER 3 ............................................................................................................... 144 Sauvages into Frenchmen: Oblates and the beginnings of residential education at Île-à-la-Crosse CHAPTER 4 ............................................................................................................... 198 “Les gens de cette place”: Oblates and the categorization of indigeneity at Île-à-la-Crosse CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 241 La civilisation moderne: The world came seeping in BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 247 INTRODUCTION From sauvage to métis: The evolution of missionary-made categories at Île-à-la-Crosse, 1845-1898 On May 24, 1845, abbé Jean-Baptiste Thibault wrote an uncharacteristically forceful letter to his bishop. The normally stolid missionary reported that he had just visited the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) post at Île-à-la-Crosse where he had encountered eighty “Montagnais” families who earnestly desired religious instruction. Unfamiliar with their language, Thibault had endeavoured to teach them the Paternoster, the Ave Maria, the Credo and the Gloria Patris in French. Then, before resuming his itinerant mission, he had promised these “bons sauvages” that he would send them priests who would learn their language and provide them with regular spiritual care. Thibault insisted on the urgency of the situation: Île-à-la-Crosse was ripe for mass conversion and the Catholic Church needed to seize the opportunity before its Protestant rivals did. He therefore urged his bishop to waste no time in dispatching missionaries to Île-à-la-Crosse and assured him that these missionaries would be welcomed enthusiastically by the locals. “Il n’est pas possible”, asserted Thibault, “que jamais peuple sauvage soit mieux disposé à embrasser la foi que ces Montagnais.”1 1 Société historique de Saint-Boniface, Archives [hereafter SHSB/Arch.], Fonds Provencher, P2707-P2709, quoted in Joseph-Norbert Provencher to the Central Councils of l’Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, Saint-Boniface, 1846. See also P2709-P2711 in ibid.; SHSB/Arch., Fonds Provencher, P1792-P1796, Jean-Baptiste Thibault to Archbishop Joseph Signay of Québec, St François-Xavier, July 6, 1839; SHSB/Arch., Fonds Provencher, P1803-P1829, Thibault to Signay, Saint-Boniface, June 18, 1843; Alexandre Taché, Vingt années de missions dans le Nord-Ouest de l’Amérique (Montréal : Eusèbe Senécal, 1866), pp. 4, 13; Barbara Benoit, “The Mission at Ile-à-la-Crosse,” The Beaver (Winter 1980), p. 41; Robert Choquette, The Oblate Assault on Canada’s Northwest (Ottawa: The University of Ottawa Press, 1995), 2 Fifty-three years later, the resident priest at Île-à-la-Crosse bemoaned the faithlessness and degeneracy of the local population. After assuming direction of Saint- Jean-Baptiste mission in January 1898, Father Jean-Marie Pénard undertook “une petite inquisition” among his regular congregants – to whom he referred collectively as nos métis.2 In reporting the findings of his investigation, Pénard noted “un tel état de dégradation et d’immoralité parmi les pauvres métis de l’Ile à la Crosse, qu’il en vint à se demander pourquoi le bon Dieu n’avait pas encore infligé à cette malheureuse place le châtiment de Sodome.” Then, somewhat ironically, the inquisitor posed a rhetorical question: “Comment nos pauvres métis en sont-ils arrivés là?”3 During the half-century bracketed by Thibault’s optimistic report and Pénard’s troubled musing, Catholic missionaries re-labelled, re-classified and re-appraised the people of Île-à-la-Crosse. To a certain extent, this revision paralleled the evolution of local identities and the shift of local demographic patterns due to migration, disease and pp. 35-37; Pierre Duchaussois, Aux glaces polaires: Indiens et Esquimaux (Lyon: Stephanus Faugier, 1921), pp.
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