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An Ethnohistorian in Rupert's Land An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land Unfinished Conversations jennifer s. h. brown Copyright © 2017 Jennifer S. H. Brown Published by AU Press, Athabasca University 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8 ISBN 978-1-77199-171-1 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-77199-172-8 (PDF) ISBN 978-1-77199-173-5 (epub) DOI: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991711.01 Cover design by Martyn Schmoll Interior design by Sergiy Kozakov Cover image: “White Trader with Indian Trappers,” artist unknown, with permission of the Royal Ontario Museum © ROM Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Brown, Jennifer S. H., 1940–, author An ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: unfinished conversations / Jennifer S. H. Brown. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. 1. Hudson’s Bay Company—History. 2. Indians of North America—Northwest, Canadian—History. 3. Indians of North America—First contact with Europeans— Northwest, Canadian. 4. Fur trade—Northwest, Canadian—History. 5. Fur traders—Northwest, Canadian—History. 6. Ethnohistory—Northwest, Canadian. 7. Rupert’s Land—History. I. Title. FC3206.B78 2017 971.2’01 C2017-901052-2 C2017-901053-0 Athabasca University Press acknowledges the assistance provided by the Government of Alberta, Alberta Media Fund. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons licence, Attribution– Noncommercial–No Derivative Works 4.0 International: see www.creativecommons. org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. To obtain permission for uses beyond those outlined in the Creative Commons licence, please contact AU Press, Athabasca University, at [email protected]. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 5 PART I Finding Words and Remembering 1 Rupert’s Land, Nituskeenan, Our Land: Cree and European Naming and Claiming Around the Dirty Sea 23 2 Linguistic Solitudes and Changing Social Categories 47 3 The Blind Men and the Elephant: Touching the Fur Trade 61 PART II “We Married the Fur Trade”: Close Encounters and Their Consequences 4 A Demographic Transition in the Fur Trade: Family Sizes of Company Officers and Country Wives, ca. 1750–1850 73 5 Challenging the Custom of the Country: James Hargrave, His Colleagues, and “the Sex” 85 6 Partial Truths: A Closer Look at Fur Trade Marriage 103 PART III Families and Kinship, the Old and the Young 7 Older Persons in Cree and Ojibwe Stories: Gender, Power, and Survival 127 8 Kinship Shock for Fur Traders and Missionaries: The Cross-Cousin Challenge 137 9 Fur Trade Children in Montréal: The St. Gabriel Street Church Baptisms, 1796–1825 145 PART IV Recollecting: Women’s Stories of the Fur Trade and Beyond 10 “Mrs. Thompson Was a Model Housewife”: Finding Charlotte Small 161 11 “All These Stories About Women”: “Many Tender Ties” and a New Fur Trade History 183 12 Aaniskotaapaan: Generations and Successions 195 PART V Cree and Ojibwe Prophets and Preachers: Braided Streams 13 The Wasitay Religion: Prophecy, Oral Literacy, and Belief on Hudson Bay 215 14 “I Wish to Be as I See You”: An Ojibwe-Methodist Encounter in Fur Trade Country, 1854–55 237 15 James Settee and His Cree Tradition: “An Indian Camp at the Mouth of Nelson River Hudsons Bay 1823” 255 PART VI Chiefs, Medicine Men, and Newcomers on the Berens River: Unfinished Conversations 16 “As for Me and My House”: Zhaawanaash and Methodism at Berens River, 1874–83 281 17 Fair Wind: Medicine and Consolation on the Berens River 299 18 Fields of Dreams: A. Irving Hallowell and the Berens River Ojibwe 321 Publication Credits 345 Index 349 Acknowledgements This collection of essays became a book thanks to the warm support and encouragement afforded to me by Athabasca University Press, and particularly by Pamela MacFarland Holway, senior editor, and Megan Hall, acting director of the press. Their interest in the project was manifest in the assistance they rendered with converting my older texts into digital form through optical char- acter recognition treatment, since several articles predated the computer age or were in outdated formats. Their consistent help, good advice, and enthusiasm have been deeply appreciated throughout the project. I am grateful also to the publishers and editors who responded promptly and cordially with permission to reprint those articles for which they held copyright; publication credits and copyright information appear at the end of this volume. My warm thanks also to Joyce Hildebrand, a most meticulous copy editor; to Weldon Hiebert, who produced the maps of Rupert’s Land and of places mentioned in the text; and to Renée Fossett, who provided the comprehensive index for the book. The articles gathered here came into being with the help and support of professors, friends, colleagues, and, in many cases, peer reviewers, across the decades from the 1960s onward. Several are cited and thanked in the intro- duction or in specific chapters, and I will not try to name them all here. Some of them, however, have contributed in one way or another to more than one chapter and to my work over a period of years. Patricia McCormack had important roles in helping chapters 3, 4, and 5 see the light of day. Chapters 4 and 5 first appeared in 1976 in theWestern Canadian Journal of Anthropology, a small journal that Pat edited as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Alberta. As a graduate student myself at the time, I was happy to bring out two of my first fur trade writings in that venue, while completing my dissertation, which found publication four years later (Brown 1980). Then in 1988, as co-organizer of the Fort Chipewyan and Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference, she invited me to be a plenary speaker—an opportunity that led vii doi:10.15215/aupress/9781771991711.01 Acknowledgements to the writing of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” (chapter 3). Sylvia Van Kirk, early in our respective careers, was another important player, both as a colleague and as the scholar who first discovered the remarkable papers of fur trader George Nelson in the Metropolitan Public Library of Toronto. Even as we followed rather different paths, her work had a formative influence that may be seen in chapter 6 (with its focus on Nelson) and in the story of our friendship (chapter 11) dating back to the 1970s. In the 1990s, my research on A. Irving Hallowell and the Berens River Ojbwe was much facilitated by working collaboratively with Maureen Mat- thews, whose CBC Radio documentary projects took us to several Berens River communities to gather stories and memories. Chapters 17 and 18 build, in part, on that collaboration and owe much to her journalistic skills, experience, and dedication. The Canada Research Chair that I held at the University of Winnipeg from 2004 until my retirement in 2011 provided critical research support in those years, including the means to support the research activities of my CRC associate, Susan Elaine Gray, and Anne Lindsay, my research assistant, both in collaboration with my projects and to aid some of their own scholarly undertakings. I am grateful for all their contributions to the work on Hallowell and Chief William Berens and for their research in other spheres as well. The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies in the university library was my valued home base for a good many years of scholarly work, teaching, and relationships with a wide network of people whose conversations and exchanges of ideas and information have been an immeasurable resource and inspiration. As ever, my family has been a source of affectionate support and encour- agement. My father, Harcourt Brown, set me on an academic path through his example, good practice, and confidence that I would succeed; chapter 12 says more about him. Wilson Brown, my husband, knew what he was getting into over fifty years ago when we got engaged. He and our son, Matthew, have been fellow travellers and pillars of support throughout. viii doi:10.15215/aupress/9781771991711.01 An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land Lake Athabasca HUDSON BAY Port Nelson r York Cape Henrietta Rive r Factory Fort Maria on e s v l i e Severn R N JAMES e s Île-à-la-Crosse ay BAY H Riv er n er Akimiski Island N iv wa o Cumberland Saskatchewan River R k rt E h Sa s House n k r a Norway House e Charlton Island t v ch e r Fort Albany Rupert River Rocky Mountain e Lake S Riv e w r k House a e Winnipeg is n i v n Waskaganish R Poplar River i r Moose Factory ve r W i ve R Moose Fort i Berens River Pauingassi ny Moose River R lba n A a Dauphin River Poplar Hill w Fort Pelly e Little Grand Pikangikum h A c s t s i Rapids a Jackhead n k i s b Longlac Sa o S i o uth n e Selkirk R Lac Seul iver Lake Nipigon Winnipeg Rainy River Rainy Lake Manitou Rapids Lake Superior Red River Fond du Lac Bad River Rupert’s Land boundary 0 250 500 km doi:10.15215/aupress/9781771991711.01 Lake Athabasca HUDSON BAY Port Nelson r York Cape Henrietta Rive r Factory Fort Maria on e s v l i e Severn R N JAMES e s Île-à-la-Crosse ay BAY H Riv er n er Akimiski Island N iv wa o Cumberland Saskatchewan River R k rt E h Sa s House n k r a Norway House e Charlton Island t v ch e r Fort Albany Rupert River Rocky Mountain e Lake S Riv e w r k House a e Winnipeg is n i v n Waskaganish R Poplar River i r Moose Factory ve r W i ve R Moose Fort i Berens River Pauingassi ny Moose River R lba n A a Dauphin River Poplar Hill w Fort Pelly e Little Grand Pikangikum h A c s t s i Rapids a Jackhead n k i s b Longlac Sa o S i o uth n e Selkirk R Lac Seul iver Lake Nipigon Winnipeg Rainy River Rainy Lake Manitou Rapids Lake Superior Red River Fond du Lac Bad River Rupert’s Land boundary 0 250 500 km doi:10.15215/aupress/9781771991711.01 Introduction This book brings together eighteen essays that were written for varied audi- ences and appeared in scattered places over a span of forty years.
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