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"Just Following the Buffalo": Origins of a Montana Métis Community

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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 2006 "Just Following the Buffalo": Origins of a Montana Métis Community Martha Harroun Foster Middle Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Foster, Martha Harroun, ""Just Following the Buffalo": Origins of a Montana Métis Community" (2006). Great Plains Quarterly. 97. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/97 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 26:3 (Summer 2006). Copyright © 2006 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. "JUST FOLLOWING THE BUFFALO" ORIGINS OF A MONTANA METIS COMMUNITY MARTHA HARROUN FOSTER By 1879 the vast buffalo herds were all but For Metis people, buffalo had replaced beaver as gone from the Great Plains. Many of the the backbone of their fur trade economy. Their remaining animals had moved south from the production of robes for the eastern markets and :\1ilk River of northern Montana and Alberta pemmican for the Hudson's Bay and American into the Judith Basin of central Montana. In fur companies provided the economic base of these rich grasslands, for a few more years, life a growing number of communities spreading went on as it had for centuries. Following the westward from the Red River of Manitoba, buffalo came many Indian bands, as well as Minnesota, and North Dakota. Among the :\iletis who had been hunting on the Milk River people moving into central Montana was a for decades. A buffalo~based economy had group of Metis families who would settle where brought prosperity to the Native people of the the old Carroll Trail crossed Spring Creek in Plains. The animals provided essential food the gentle hills watered and protected by the and materials in addition to products for trade. Judith, Moccasin, and Snowy mountains. Here they would found a Metis community, the Spring Creek settlement (Lewistown), where Key Words: buffalo trade, fur trade, Lewistown, their descendents still live today.1 Metis, Montana, Red River, Spring Creek, upper The Spring Creek band's Metis roots go Missouri River far back into the fur trade history of what is today Canada, the Great Lakes, and the upper Martha Harroun Foster is an assistant professor of Mississippi River drainage. Over the years their L'nited States West and American Indian history at Middle Tennessee State University. Her book, ancestors, like other children of European and We Know Who We Are: Metis Identity in a Mon­ Indian unions, entered the fur trade. Their tana Community, was published recently (2006) knowledge of both European and Indian lan­ b)' L'niversity of Oklahoma Press. Previous research guages and customs made them an asset to the includes studies of Crow, Hidatsa, and Iroquois women fur trade companies. Gradually they began to in the historical literature. develop a distinctive culture, neither Indian nor [GPQ 26 (Summer): 185-202] European. They maintained a characteristic 185 186 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2006 village organization of long narrow lots front­ robes. But a buffalo-based economy has unique ing on streams and reaching back to commonly requirements, including the proximity of large held grazing lands. They developed a language herds. The Metis soon exhausted nearby game (Michif) that combined elements of Cree, supplies, and individual, close-to-home hunt­ French, and Chippewa, and they occupied an ing no longer yielded sufficient provisions for important economic niche centered on the buf­ the communities. In response, by the 18305, falo trade. Their unique language, dress, music, large-scale, organized buffalo hunts to distant and dance became characteristic and occupied a areas became more prevalent. As before, meat, central position in an open, friendly, and gener­ pemmican, and robes from these hunts sup­ ous social round in which Metis-style foods and plied the Metis throughout the year, while holiday celebrations held a central place.2 surpluses (especially of pemmican) were sold to Gradually, economic and environmental the Hudson's Bay Companx, which provided a factors encouraged the fur trade's steady move­ small but constant market. ment westward. By the early 1800s, beaver In addition to buffalo becoming scarce depletion decimated the traditional economic along the Red River, another development foundation of Metis communities in the Great fundamentally changed the nature of the Red Lakes region, upper Mississippi drainage, and River fur trade after 1830. U.S. traders, eager eastern Canada. It was on the western Great for a supply of buffalo robes and other furs, Plains, with its plentiful supply of beaver, opened posts on the upper (southern) Red and bison, and game, that the Metis established upper Missouri rivers. Metis and Indian hunt­ new communities. Here they created intercon­ ers found that they could make greater profits nected social and cultural centers on the rivers by dealing with American traders whose access and streams that flow to the Red River of the to cheap water transportation on the Missouri North. Throughout the first half of the nine­ and Mississippi rivers made transport of bulky teenth century, the Red River Metis, as the robes to eastern markets economical. Popular mixed-descent peoples of the Red River trade as bedding, wraps, boots, coats, and mili­ area came to be known, flourished, all the tary clothing, the robes attracted American while absorbing new peoples and extending domestic and export markets eager to absorb their far-flung kinship networks. all that the Metis produced. In response to The Red River trade region extended from this demand, U.S. trader Norman Kittson Red Lake and Lake of the Woods in pres­ established a post at Pembina in 1844. Here ent-day Minnesota and Ontario to the Rocky on the upper Red River in U.S. territory, he Mountains on the west, and from northern actively courted the Canadian and U.S. Metis Saskatchewan and Alberta south to Minne­ buffalo-robe trade. The forty-ninth parallel as sota, the Dakotas, and Montana, including the yet made little difference to the hunters, who upper Missouri River. Various unrecorded non­ ignored it. No one enforced tariffs, nor could Indian trappers probably reached the heart of they in such a vast area still under Native this region, the Red River drainage, in the early control.4 1700s. By 1743 Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, With a good market established by the Sieur de La Verendrye, had established two 1840s, the buffalo hunt took on grand propor­ posts in the Red River basin, one at present-day tions, becoming the principal support of many Winnipeg and another, just to the west, near Red River Metis families. The success of the Portage la Prairie. Metis families, including buffalo trade depended on an efficient means to many ancestors of those who would later settle move products overland to ports, especially St. near Spring Creek, steadily moved into the Paul, Minnesota, where they could be shipped area as beaver and the market for their skins cheaply by boat or barge. Red River carts, disappeared. More and more families turned to organized into long trains, provided the Metis the buffalo trade, especially of pemmican and with a cost-effective mode of transport. Joseph "JUST FOLLOWING THE BUFFALO" 187 Kinsey Howard, journalist and historian, wrote sent a small group of French Canadian and a classic description of this vehicle: Metis who, as French speakers, he hoped would be less offensive to the Blackfeet than English­ The cart was built entirely of wood and the speaking Americans. Barely surviving the dan­ noise of its wheel hubs as they rubbed on the gerous mission, Berger succeeded in bringing a axle, which usually was an unpeeled poplar Blackfeet trading party to Fort Union, thereby log, was a tooth-stabbing screech which was opening that profitable trade and bringing never forgotten by anyone who heard it; it what is today Montana into the heart of the was as if a thousand fingernails were drawn Missouri River fur trade.6 across a thousand panes of glass .... By 1832 Missouri River traders shipped robes The Red River cart brigades never sneaked regularly out of Fort Union. After 1832, as more up on anybody. On a still day you could hear steamboats reached Fort Union, the trans­ them coming for miles, and see the great port of heavy robes became easier, cheaper, cloud of yellow dust they raised; and if the and more profitable. Estimates indicate that buffalo of the plains did finally flee into holes between 1841 and 1870, traders transported in the ground as the Indians believed-well, the products (robes, skins, meat, and tongues) it was no wonder. of approximately 115,000 buffalo a year down the Missouri River, far surpassing the HBC's Hundreds of these carts now rolled across the 17,000 a year. In 1858 Fort Benton (Montana) prairie, carrying provisions to the hunt and alone shipped close to 20,000 robes. The HBC, . 5 pro ducts to flver ports. St. Paul markets, and the Missouri River trade But as the buffalo disappeared near Red allowed the Metis buffalo hunters to enjoy River, it was the western plains, including the competitive markets and good prices.7 upper Missouri River drainage, that began to Even though the buffalo trade was moving attract the robe trade. The Missouri, in addi­ west, Metis families continued, as they had tion to providing an inexpensive means of for decades, to organize their buffalo hunts in transportation, flowed through the heart of and to set out from Pembina (North Dakota).
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