‘By Education and Conduct’: Educating Trans-Imperial Indigenous Fur-Trade Children in the Hudson’s Bay Company Territories and the British Empire, 1820s to 1870s By Erin Millions A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Manitoba in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba December 22, 2017 Copyright © 2017 by Erin Millions ABSTRACT Mid-nineteenth-century Indigenous fur-trade students were part of a larger group of mixed-descent children in the British Empire who were the product of intimate relations between British men and local women in the colonies. These imperial children were the source of a great deal of anxiety for their parents, British administrators, missionaries, and entrepreneurs. In the mid-nineteenth-century Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) territories, the parents of elite Indigenous fur-trade children sought a British-style education for their children in order to equip them thrive in the HBC territories and the larger British Empire. These children were sent to schools in the HBC territories, the Canadian colonies, and Britain in order to learn how to perform gendered British middle-class identities. In the HBC territories, however, missionaries who were attuned to the project of civilizing and Christianizing Indigenous peoples leveraged this curriculum in different ways than their counterparts in metropolitan spaces. Elite Indigenous fur-trade students were highly mobile, as schooling often required children to live at boarding schools far from their homes at fur trade posts. An extensive network of British and Indigenous kin that spanned the HBC territories, the Canadian colonies, and Britain supported fur-trade students who were at school. For these trans-imperial children and their families, the HBC territories were not an isolated outpost of the British Empire but were only one site in an imperial circuit of familial mobility. The children’s educational mobility provides a window into the reciprocal movement of people, ideas, and culture between the HBC territories, Britain, and other parts of the Empire that formed the ‘mutually constitutive’ Empire. The elite Indigenous fur-trade children in this study were able to draw on both their Indigenous heritage and the privilege afforded to them by their elite status in their attempts to negotiate the shifting racial and social boundaries in the HBC territories and the larger British Empire. Indigenous skills, language, material culture, and kin ties existed and operated alongside the British cultural practices and values that served as signifiers of their elite social status. These students performed versions of British middle-class ‘respectability’ that were both ubiquitous to the British Empire and tailored to the local conditions of the HBC territories. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I begin by acknowledging that I have researched and written this dissertation while living on Treaty 1 lands, which include the traditional territories of the Anishinabek, Assiniboine, Cree, Dakota, Métis, and Oji-Cree, and Métis Nations. My work has explored the sometimes intimate and tragic lives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous fur trade men, women, and children. I have done my best to honour and respect the families, both past and present, who have shared their stories with me. This dissertation is a project that has spanned more than a decade and included two universities, three dissertation advisors, two cities, and two babies. I have completed this project only with the assistance and support of many, many people. I am very lucky in my academic life to have been mentored and supported by a cadre of women to whom I am immensely grateful. My PhD supervisor, Dr. Adele Perry, has been my calm in the midst of chaos, and has both pushed me and reassured me as necessary at critical junctures. She has also taught me valuable lessons about the power of saying ‘no.’ Valerie Korinek started this journey with me as my Master’s supervisor, and has continued to be a source of wisdom and support through the years. Without her, I would have given up. Betsey Jameson and Sarah Carter taught me to look beyond borders in ways that continue to inform my scholarship. Laura Ishiguro and Kristine Alexander have been kind enough to share their experiences as early career scholars, their research, advice, and academic networks. I am also thankful to Jim Miller, who introduced me to Indigenous history, and to Bill Waiser, who taught me how to write and to think about history beyond the academy. Doug Peers and Chris Frank helped me to ground my research in the British Empire. Jarvis Brownlie, Greg Smith, Sarah Elvins and Len Kuffert all supported my work as Grad Chairs over the years. Sherry Farrell Racette, Jarvis Brownlie, and Gerry Friesen served on my dissertation committee, and offered generous feedback on my research. Gerry has also been kind enough to share his own research and knowledge about Red River over the years. Mona Gleason’s commentary on this dissertation in her role as my external examiner pushed me to make new connections between my research that will shape how I think about several points made in the study moving forward. An historian’s work is nothing without sources to draw on, and this thesis has benefitted from the assistance of numerous archivists and curators. Chris Kotecki and Rachel Mills at the Archives of Manitoba and the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives have kindly helped me with many research and archival questions over the years. Amelia Fay and Maureen Matthews at the Manitoba Museum have allowed me to access the collections at the museum that relate to my ii research, and provided the photos of Manitoba Museum holdings that are included in this study. Sherry George, the curator at Fort Frances Museum & Cultural Centre, delved into her archive to find an obscure primary source for me, and Val McKinley, the Curator at the University of Winnipeg Anthropology Museum was both inspiring and encouraging at a time when I needed a bit of both. Gloria Romaniuk at the Rupert’s Land Diocese Archives, Josephine Sallis at the South Peace Archives, and Brian Hardcastle at Forest School in London have all contribute their expertise as well. I must also thank the many descendants of the fur trade families in this study who have shared their own genealogical research with me and, in particular, to Judy Kessler for sharing her family’s private collection of Davis family letters. Financial support for my dissertation work has been received from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canadian Graduate Scholarship), the University of Calgary, the University of Manitoba (University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship), the Newberry Library (the Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies Graduate Student Fellowship), St. Paul’s College (The Martin Kavanaugh-Gaultier Laverendrye Fellowship), and St. John’s College (Canadian Shield Scholarship). My academic home for the last many years has been St. John’s College, which has provided me with an office with actual natural light, a community of welcoming and inspiring interdisciplinary scholars, and free pancake breakfasts. I am most indebted to the people who told me to keep going, and whose confidence in my work held me up when I needed support. Leslie Hall has been there to answer the calls and texts that were really important. Susie Fisher, Leah Morton, and Krista Walters have shared this graduate student journey with me. Krista Barclay and I have shared hours of conversations about fur trade families. Our message conversations about archival finds that nobody else would be excited about kept me on track through the writing process. Elaine Millions, Cara and Tala Crossley, Amy and Darcy Torgerson, and Clare Millions and Aggie Johnson may not have always understood what exactly I was doing, but they have always been my cheerleaders. Without Mom travelling Winnipeg to stay with my family, frequently and for long periods of time, this dissertation would not have been completed. Dad and Aggie shouldered the burden of getting my house in order for when we had neither the time nor energy to do so ourselves, and we are immensely grateful. Eric and Leah Blomquist were both born during the course of my PhD, and shaped my perspectives on children, families, and affect in ways both large and small. I am a better (if somewhat more tired) teacher and historian as a result. To Perry Blomquist, thank you. For all the things. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 IMPORTING RESPECTABILITY: IMPERIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF CLASS, RACE, GENDER, AND PARENTING IN THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY TERRITORIES 27 CHAPTER 2 LEARNING RESPECTABILITY: EDUCATING INDIGENOUS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN 65 CHAPTER 3 INDIGENOUS FUR-TRADE STUDENTS AT SCHOOL, PART I: PROVIDING A HOME AWAY FROM HOME 104 CHAPTER 4 INDIGENOUS FUR-TRADE STUDENTS AT SCHOOL, PART II: IN THE CLASSROOM 144 CHAPTER 5 DEATH, DISTANCE, AND DISLOCATION AT SCHOOL 200 CHAPTER 6 ‘WRITE ME FOR ANY SAKE’: CORRESPONDENCE, AFFECT, AND TRANS-IMPERIAL FUR-TRADE FAMILIES 226 CHAPTER 7 MOBILITY, EDUCATION, AND TRANS-IMPERIAL FUR-TRADE KIN NETWORKS 272 CONCLUSION 315 BIBLIOGRAPHY 324 iv LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Matilda Davis, c. 1870, Archives of Manitoba 44 4.1 Prospectus, Mansion House Establishment for Young Ladies, 162 Archives of Manitoba 4.2 Textbook written by Alexander Kennedy Isbister, Archives of Manitoba 164 4.3 Globe, Miss Davis School, Manitoba Museum 167 4.4 Moccasins, Manitoba Museum 192 4.5 Beaded Firebag given to the Earl of Southesk, Royal Alberta Museum 195 4.6 Lydia Christie, Glenbow Museum 198 6.1 Letter from Johnnie Davis to his father, Archives of Manitoba 239 7.1 Photo, Martha Douglas and Jane Douglas Dallas, BC Archives 288 v INTRODUCTION I.