324 Eastern Cree Community in Relation to Fur Trade

324 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) EASTERN CREE COMMUNITY IN RELATION TO FUR TRADE POST IN THE 1830 's: THE BACKGROUND OF THE POSTING PROCESS Richard J. Preston McMaster University Resume. Le present article etablit un contraste entre la notion de 'communaute' chez les Cris de la region d'East Main sur la baie James et celles qu'on retrouve chez les Europeens des postes de traite des fourrures de la meme region. L'auteur explique ces conceptions differentes telles qu'elles se refletent dans les actes et la structure sociale de chacune des deux cultures et ajoute un dernier exemple qui demontre les limites de ces notions, qui ont ete transgressees, brievement, a 1'occasion du massacre de la baie Hannah. 325 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) The Eastern Cree notion of community I characterize the Eastern Cree notion as that of a portable, personal life-cycle community. That is, the essential or defining qualities of community are taken under these three qualities, with explanation of each as follows. A portable community refers to the typical quality of groups of people who are often shifting their location , 'going around' as a practical and necessary expression of the way that people get their living, killing meat and getting furs. The area covered by a group is their ecological range and was probably thought of in terms of the paths followed (Preston:fieldnotes, and Speck:fieldnotes) and campsites and trading posts where they stayed. (The 'range' concept is an alternative way of conceptualizing the much-debated 'territoriality' of Northern Algonquians). A personal community refers to several related defining qualities. Perhaps most significant is that each community will be characterized quite literally and directly by the personalities of its members, as these personalities are manifested at different times and in varying contexts. The nearly unorganized, little specialized 'structure' of the group is close enough to Victor Turner's concept of "communitas" to bear comparison with this ideal type of "even communion of equal individuals," (1969:96) they may occur in the liminal period of rites. While I would not argue 2 that the Eastern Cree lived their lives in a state of continuous liminality , their ideal of individual control of one's own actions, to maintain an easy composure within the group, emphasizes the group relationships and inhibits ego-assertion. In Turner's terms, "It is ... a matter of giving recognition to an essential and generic human bond, without which there could be no society," (Turner 1969:96). It is not a group that 326 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) lacks all hierarchical ordering, for persons ^o vary in their skills and powers. But the importance of consensus and unity is in the ability to share the benefits of skills and powers in coping with environmental contingencies, or with strangers or sorcery, and at the same time to keep each individual free from coercion by other individuals. In this sense one could say that people gathered for their individual freedom and for mutual profit, and that individualism in the European sense was nearly ostracism to the Cree. A life-cycle community refers to a social network where individuals can, and typically do, live out their lives from birth to death. The other members of the group are likely to be intimately known, and in return, to know one's moods and motives as well as skills, powers, and weaknesses. In this context, acceptance of others' acts as only partly consistent with Cree ideals and as partly idiosyncratic seems an implicit given of the culture. One accepts the foreknowledge that people, during their lives, mature towards ideals if they are given access to do so. And that with or without this access, people persist in their community, to live and act in ways only partly dependent on others, and partly predictable, often contingent upon and responsive to other's individuality. The Cree community is one side of the picture; the contrasting side is the fur trade post. And the contrasts are not hard to find. Perhaps the most obvious is the aspect of location. The posts were sedentary - though they might be closed and reopened with little notice. Where the Cree community is a personal community, the fur trade post is structured by hierarchical status accorded differentially to employees along a scale from apprentice to governor and from economic poverty to wealth. Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference327 Papers (1974) Ideally, status and reward comes to those who show industry in pursuing the goals of the Company, and whose sense of responsibility is effectively directed to one's employer. A common problem was the tendency of responsible employees to show an attitude of dependent conservatism (ranging from dutiful, dependable labour to dispirited inaction) in their work, requiring the prodding of superiors to take new initiative. Getting a living was ideally not a matter of killing meat to eat, but rather trading for furs for commercial profit, a portion of which would purchase food. Necessity often overrode this ideal, however, and hunting was common, deprivation was periodic, and starvation was occasional. Not only did the lean food resources of the area bring modification of the post's activities, but the fact of an adult male population led to personal privation and often to the solution of finding an Indian wife and thereby a family. But this rarely led to anything approaching a life-cycle community, since there was a high turnover of personnel, and the Company censured marriage with natives. Men came for commercial purposes and left when these purposes so dictated. They tended to view the character of the Indians in commercial terms as well, in terms of their relation to the posts and the goals that the posts were put there for. This leads us to the topic of 'posting' as the process by which the Indians and Europeans developed greater intensity and duration of interrelationships. 'Posting' is a phenomenon that only periodically served economic purposes for both Indians and Eurocanadians. The particular qualities of these economic purposes are quite dissimilar. The Eurocanadians wanted the labour services of the Indians mostly during the summer months, for canoe brigades to supply the inland posts, haying, wood cutting and sawing of 328 Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference Papers (1974) boards, and fishing and fowling for a food surplus to be preserved in brine against winter shortages. The Indians wanted the supply of trade goods that served as security from the hardship of starvation, and as convenience in practical efforts: (a) partly through trade goods such as knives, hatchets, fish hooks, twine, muskets and ammunitions, making good hunting much easier and giving a critical advantage in a poor winter's hunting, (b) partly through relief rations of food—where hunting was worse than poor, or where accident or other contigency left a group in serious difficulty. It is wise to consider 'posting' from the vantage of both Indian and European points of view, then. While the effects of posting appear to us as simply the tendency to gather nearer to the trading post for longer periods of time, to depend more and more on its supplies, and to expend more labour for tasks that benefited the post, the causes of these effects are more complex. The Indian view is expressed most strongly in the many accounts of starvation and accident that indicate a need for help from anyone who is better off and accessible. There were winters when, for a large area, starvation was general, and the post was the source of relief when one's own reserves had been exhausted. Since the HBC provided feasts after a good winter had yielded a quantity of fine furs, they were expected to uphold the sharing ethic in its more critical context, starvation. But it was not only calamity that motivated Indians to frequent the posts. There were more congenial motives, for gathering at the post in summer or for the New Year has a direct antecedent in the pre-fur trade Originally published as part of: 6th Algonquian Conference329 Papers (1974) Indian culture, when people got together in large groups for the purposes of socializing, marriages, ritual events such as feasts, walking-out ceremonies for young children, conjuring and other events. Traditionally, then, the summer was when the small, portable hunting-group communities came together into a temporary large community. The social and psychological contrast from a winter's relative isolation was dramatic, and after the reticent, careful initial exchange of news regarding possible death, conflict, or other problems that might concern others, a surge of intense 3 socializing followed. Fur trade posts were often built at the site of these gatherings, and in other cases the gathering sites were shifted to the post locale to combine the practical, congenial and ideological goals of trade and social exchange. The Company's goals were much less broadly conceived, and are fairly characterized as commercial. This primary attitude was not necessarily opposed to the social and ideological motives of the Indians, but the differences were sometimes marked. Conflict stemming from the differences in motives was most dramatic when the Company's man did not temper commercialism with sufficient human consideration, as in this case recorded by Erlandson, whose personal fortitude and industry was often hampered by what he described as Indian treachery, deceit, and credulity and further hampered by his white employees, described as "indolent, spiritless fellows, whom not even hunger can force to exertion," (Davies, 1963:24:221).

Load more