predetermined plan with firmly fixed dates for the NWC in 1821 caused a rash of Métis Pamphlet # 6 completion of the different stages of national unemployment, the affected individuals moved development that they could follow. Essentially, to the area around The Forks. Prior to this, the this meant that the Métis who were involved with Métis lived wherever they found work in the fur The Métis: Early Origins the beginnings of their Nation did not realize that trade or wherever they wanted to live. What the 1 Fred J. Shore they were engaged in the process of nation- move to Red River provided was the opportunity building until long after it was underway. Instead, to create a physical center for a rapidly evolving Métis ethno genesis occurred somewhere fur trapping, fur trading and working for the fur Métis homeland. In the riverlot communities of within the geographical limits of the French fur trade companies occupied their time, as did the St. Boniface, St. Vital and St. Norbert, the trade and sometime after French fur traders provisioning of the fur brigades with pemmican. various classes of Métis congregated and extended their reach beyond the St. Lawrence In fact, the production and sale of pemmican prospered by farming, organizing buffalo hunts, River Valley. Prior to this, the proximity of was the primary occupation of most Métis. On and by commercial freighting. In these riverine French colonial institutions in the Quebec City, the one hand, the long trade routes provided communities, trade with St. Paul and pemmican Montreal corridor precluded the development of steady employment while, on the other hand, sales to the HBC figured largely in Métis plans any new peoples. The process by which the there was economic independence to be found and with the resultant prosperity came increased Métis came into existence had to wait until in supplying pemmican for cash to both the HBC social cohesion and expanding experience as an French voyageurs and coureurs de bois reached and the North-West Company (NWC). Since the active nation. the area of the Great Lakes. Even here, the First Nations were unwilling to supply food in process was slow and limited to single locations, large enough quantities and at convenient and usually the fur trade depots. It took the great dependable times to fuel the fur brigades, the distances associated with the trade in Rupert's Métis, with their horses and Red River carts, Land, the competition provided by the Hudson's became the sole suppliers of pemmican. This Contact Bay Company (HBC), and the existence of the activity eventually produced a stable economic horse and buffalo in the region to contribute the climate in which Métissage could take place. Fred Shore, Office of University Accessibility necessary framework around which the process Inevitably, however, the competition wars fought 474-6084 of Métissage could be developed. At first denied over furs and pemmican impacted forcibly on the [email protected] in the Quebec area and then barely begun in the development of Métis nationalism. Great Lakes region, the Nation was finally created by those Métis who eventually settled in Pemmican Wars the area west of the Red River. The exact date by which the Métis were recognized as such by The ‘Pemmican Wars’ which broke out in the others is unknown. What is known, is that by the last years of the eighteenth century and which mid-eighteenth century certain people around continued until the amalgamation of the French the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers and English fur trade systems in 1821 were referring to themselves as either ‘Bois- dramatically increased the rate of Métis national Brûlés’ or ‘Métis.’ development. By 1810 the Métis were being referred to as the ‘New Nation’ and the Wars Western Origins, 1700-1750 were a direct cause of a growing Métis realization that they were, in effect, a Nation. Aboriginal Information Series The founders of the Métis Nation were During these pivotal years, the need to wage mostly unaware that a nation-building process war to defend their homes and to organize Office of University Accessibility was taking place. There was, in effect, no politically to protect their investment in the fur August 2006 trade radically increased the rate of Métis Number 6 nation-building. 1 Adapted from Fred Shore, “The Emergence of the Métis Nation in Manitoba,” in L.J. Barkwell, L. Dorion, and D.R. Préfontaine, Editors, Métis Legacy: A Métis Historiographical When the Amalgamation of the HBC and the and Annotated Bibliography, Pemmican Publications, 2001.