Nineteenth-Century Algonquin Culture Change

Nineteenth-Century Algonquin Culture Change M. JEAN BLACK University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill The 19th century was a period of rapid cultural, social and economic change for the Algonquin of southwestern Quebec. During this time, traditional trapping economies were drastically altered and the contemporary wage economy was foreshadowed. Local bands disappeared and others formed at new locations making it difficult to identify many modern band communi ties with any known to have existed previously. In this paper I discuss some of the changes which occurred during this period of transition between the 20th century and the more distant past. My approach is an individualistic or particularistic one in which I trace geneological ties between individuals mentioned in church and mission archives and their contemporary descen dants. By following the careers of some of these individuals as they appear at first one mission location and then another, it is also possible to trace the origin and decline of local Algonquin bands in the Ottawa valley. My original intent was to extend geneologies for families residing at the Algonquin reserve of River Desert (Kitiganzibi) to ancestors living early in the 19th century at Oka (Lake of Two Mountains), and in this I have been successful to some extent. My interest in these geneologies was part of a study of change in kinship patterns; but the sources I used have proven of value for investigating other aspects of culture change, ethnicity, and ethnic identity. The data on which this paper is based are taken from a number of sources including the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, the registries of the Sulpician mission of Oka, the registries of the Oblate missionary order, and Indian Affairs records. The registry of the Sulpician church at Oka is of particular interest since until recently I had believed these records were lost in a church fire in 1877. For that reason, work with them is still incomplete. These archival data sets contain different, but complementary, kinds of information. The Hudson's Bay Company records contain more economic 62 ALGONQUIN CULTURE CHANGE 63 data and references to the activities and goals of the fur traders. They contain more information about non-Christians than do mission records and are familiar to ethnohistorians. Indian Affairs records are less complete but contain valuable descriptive data about some communities. Mission records contain more references to women than do either of the others. The demographic history of the population is more apparent in church records, even taking into account the fact that non-christians are under-represented. Often the progress of missionary activity can be assessed by the number and frequency of adult baptisms and, in the upper Ottawa, the inception of European-style surnaming and its increase is more apparent. A place of origin for individuals is frequently given by the missionaries, especially after the 1820s, a point of interest in the discussion following. All these records provide interesting insights about the assumptions, concerns, and motives of those who kept them. The cognitive maps of the various authors may be quite different, not only between different points in time but also between different categories and interest groups of the same time. Our inquiries may be directed profitably with this kept in mind and new questions may be raised by discrepancies or varying points of view. The Oka Sulpicians recorded baptisms, burials, and marriages of those who frequented the mission village between 1721 and 1850. The registries of the Oblate Order begin in 1843 and are particularly revealing of the origins of contemporary Algonquin communities. The River Desert Band is the largest of the Algonquin communities in southwestern Quebec with a reserve located near the town of Maniwaki at the confluence of the Desert and Gatineau Rivers. Tradition credits the establishment of the reserve in the 1850s to the efforts of Antoine Paki- nawatik, an Algonquin chief of the Oka mission community. His petitions to the government to have a reserve set aside for the Algonquin are thought to have been a major factor in inducing the government to grant such a reserve in 1854. A few years prior to this, several families are believed to have left Oka and moved with him to River Desert forming the core of the Band. Frank Speck repeated this tradition, writing that the Band formerly had resided at Lake of Two Mountains, coming to Maniwaki from there (cf. Speck 1929:98). This phrasing implies that Speck's view of River Desert origins was monolithic, assuming the movement of an entire community more or less intact from one locale to another within an easily discernible time frame. It also implies that he saw Native communities as residential units with a particular home place similar to European style villages. How ever, the origins of the community at River Desert are far more complex and it is clear from the data cited that the Gatineau-River Desert area was utilized by Oka and other Algonquin throughout the 19th century, not as a 64 M. JEAN BLACK residence in European terms, but certainly as part of their territory. There seems to have been a group of Algonquin trapping along the Gatineau who were not identified with Lake of Two Mountains and who traded at the Hudson's Bay Company posts at Lac des Sables or at River Desert after 1838. By all accounts, the 19th-century mission at Oka consisted of an Iro quois village and an Algonquian community. It is beyond the scope of this paper to deal with the earlier history of the Oka Algonquin community except to point out that it was already composite in its origin. Some of the Algonquians came from the lower Ottawa River bands mentioned by Champlain in 1613, but others joined them there. Nipissings formed a com ponent of the Oka community and there was reciprocal influence among the Algonquians. One such influence noted by linguists is the similarity of the language spoken by contemporary descendants of these two groups. "The Algonquin of Oka Mission at the mouth of the Ottawa River (Cuoq 1886) and now at Maniwaki, Quebec, is taken to reflect the speech of the Nipissing segment of the mission population, originally from Lake Nipissing" (God- dard 1978:583). Descriptions of 19th-century Oka by both Hudson's Bay Company men and Indian affairs officials note only the presence of Algonquin, Nipissing and Iroquois. In contrast, the Sulpician mission records mention several other ethnic identities including Tetes de Boule, a term most frequently applied to the population of the St. Maurice river drainage, sometimes to people living along the upper Gatineau and upper Lievre rivers, and in at least one instance to the band at "the grand lac" (Grand Lake Victo ria). Also mentioned are Ottawa, who were perhaps equal in numbers to the Algonquin and Nipissing at Oka. Others mentioned between 1821 and 1831 include Sauteaux, Ojibwa, Mississauga and Abenaki. These records clearly indicate that the 19th-century Algonquian community at Oka nor mally included individuals of at least five different ethnic groups; Algon quin, Nipissing, Tete-de-Boule, Ottawa, and Abenaki. The others may have represented an occasional or sporadic visit to the mission although some Mississauga remained a part of the community for at least a few years. A sharp contrast between Algonquians and Iroquois at Oka was re ported in 1821 by John McLean, who compared the farming and wage- earning Iroquois to the Algonquin, who "lived principally by the chase". He also stated that despite the close proximity of the two groups there was little friendly interaction between them; and, in fact, few could speak the others' language (McLean 1932:11-12). In 1844 the Indian agent at Oka wrote that the Algonquin and Nipissing "follow the chase" and that they came to Lake of Two Mountains for only about two months each year. This scarcely qualifies as a place of residence in European terms. Accord- ALGONQUIN CULTURE CHANGE 65 ing to this report, only women and elderly men cultivated "small patches of land" to a very limited extent while the Iroquois devoted themselves "in a considerable degree to agriculture" (Canada, Indian Department 1845:20). McLean's denial of Algonquian-Iroquois interaction, taken quite liter ally, could also mean that some friendly interaction did occur and that some could speak the other's language. This interpretation is supported by mission records of marriages between Iroquois and Nipissing, Algonquin, Ottawa, and Abenaki. During the 10-year period just mentioned, the num ber of Algonquin-Iroquois marriages equaled those between Algonquin and Nipissing. Were the missionaries more sensitive to ethnic differences than were the Hudson's Bay men or the government officials? Were they repeating claims of ethnicity made by Algonquian speakers or did they make these assignments of ethnicity based on their own cognitive maps of Native so cial organization? As for the other sources, we know that keeping track of the debt of an individual and where he took his fur was important to traders, not his ethnicity. One might speculate that government officials were less concerned with distinctions among the Algonquians than with the distinction between Algonquian and Iroquois because this had relevance in the governance of Oka. Reports that relations between Algonquians and Iroquois were strained indicates difficulties for the government in adminis tration and for the HBC in trade which no doubt deflected their attention from any diversity among Algonquians. The Oka Iroquois were attracted by the possibilities of trapping, and attempts of some Iroquois to claim trapping rights in the region at a time when these territories were already under pressure caused conflicts.

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