bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, pp. 40–41
Home from the Hill: A History of the
Métis in Western Canada, by Don McLean.
Publisher: Gabriel Dumont Institute of
Native Studies and Applied Research,
Regina, 1987. 315 pages. $12.95
Few Canadians anywhere are aware that the prairies owe their existence as a part of Canada largely to the Métis and their leader Louis Riel. Largely by their efforts, it did not become another American state or a colony of Canada of the day, but instead an equal partner in Confederation. The birth of Western Canada is thus inextricably linked with the history of the Métis people. It was within the vast territories stretching from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains that the Métis nation emerged. There it struggled against an aggressively advancing new civilization.
This story of the rise and fall of a proud and dynamic people against the socioeconomic and political realities of the nineteenth and twentieth century Canada are the focus of Home from the Hill — A History of the Métis in Western Canada. The author depicts with verve and passion the Métis history from their beginnings in the fur trade to the present time and offers a uniquely native perspective of the events that led to their final desolation.
McLean traces both the European and Indian roots of the Métis in order to show the birth of the Métis. He follows its evolution into a distinct group conscious of its unique identity. In the words of the author, “Les Métis came into being as children of the fur trade, through passion and love, through economic expediency, and at times through the shameful exploitation of women as rewards for hard labour and objects of trade…They [the Métis] emerged as a brand new cultural, social and historical entity as a direct result of the actions of the imperial powers of Europe engaged in the extraction of the fur staple in North America”. The increasing population of these “very useful hands” was to the advantage of the Hudson’s Bay and the North West Companies. The book outlines the role of these bilingual and bicultural people in the history of the fur trade era in Rupert’s Land as they became indispensable to fur traders as interpreters, clerks, canoemen, fur traders, packers and manual labourers.
The Métis first made a stand for their rights against the imposed foreign monopoly in the 1840’s when they successfully challenged the Hudson’s Bay Company trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. Asa result of “Le commerce est libre” movement the Métis nation came into being. “The Métis emerged victorious in this struggle”, McLean goes on, “and were therefore recognized as a courageous and dynamic force in the Canadian West — a force to be reckoned with”. During the 1850-1870 period, the heyday of the Métis free trade and “a brief golden era” in their history, they lived a culturally rich life engaging in democratically run buffalo hunts conducted according to “the law of the prairie,” that was so essential to their survival.
The purchase of Rupert’s Land by the federal government in 1870 was done with the purpose of providing Central Canada with an agricultural colony and the markets for their products. The West was to be settled for the benefits of the Eastern elite, says McLean, and “not for that of the settlers and certainly not for the benefit of the people already living in the West”. The Red River resistance is viewed by the author as “The first, but by no means the last confrontation between westerners and a federal government determined to go ahead with its policies irrespective of western discontent”
The chapters on the creation of Manitoba describe the Métis peoples’ victory in both winning the West for Canada as well as ensuring that a new “postage stamp” province entered the Confederation with most of the rights that other provinces enjoyed. There was to be no room for the Métis and their leader in the new order. Louis Riel, who should have been the first premier of Manitoba was denied the promised amnesty and hounded into exile, and his people driven out of their homes. For example, the guaranteed land base of 1.4 million acres for the settlement of Métis land claims was circumvented by the issue of a “scrip” to Métis that could be quickly retrieved by land speculators.
The book describes how some federal government officials were involved in taking land ownership away from the Métis and placing it into the hands of speculators who bought it for a fraction of its face value. “From the beginning speculators and bankers — not the Métis – were the real beneficiaries of the land grant carried out through the use of scrip” “. Over the years, the Métis of Red River saw their victory turning against them. The loss of their land through the sale of scrip and the bureaucratic and military harrassment of the Métis eventually triggered their exodus from Red River.
McLean follows them westward to the communities they established in the remote regions of the North West Territories, the most important at St. Laurent on the South Saskatchewan River. Again for a brief time they continued to live in the old ways, hunting buffaloes, trapping and trading. Some subsistence farming began to play a role in their economy. As the years went by, and as many Manitoba Métis moved to live in the Territories, concern grew over their land entitlements. Officials insisted on surveying and dividing the North West Territories on the American square-lot pattern which bore no relation to the pattern of settlement that had already developed there: narrow river frontage lots. Threatened by the westward advance of agricultural civilization, the Métis had regularly petitioned Ottawa for a settlement of their land claims and for capital to help them join the new agricultural economy being established in the West.
Their pleas went unheard. The aggressive colonization policies begun in 1878 by John A. Macdonald’s Conservative Government were taking shape. The west was to be settled at any price and the process had begun. The author presents a broad picture of the political struggle taking place in the North West in the 1870’s and 1880’s: land speculation taking place in the Prince Albert region where the CPR route was expected to run and a subsequent depression when the CPR moved the route 200 miles south; economic collapse of the CPR before its completion and the imminent political disaster of the Conservative Government. The author’s attention focusses on the activities of Lawrence Clarke, a chief factor for the Hudson’s Bay post at Fort Carlton, a figure mostly ignored by other historians, who, according to the evidence accumulated by McLean, played a major role in provoking a military conflict between the Métis and the federal government to end the depression in the Prince Albert region. The conclusion of the author’s evidence is that Lawrence Clarke was the government’s ’agent provocateur’ whose position and information could be used to initiate armed conflict in the West. For Macdonald, a small carefully controlled rebellion would provide the political capital to justify financial support for the bankrupt CPR. Riel had never wanted an open military conflict; throughout the agitations, he expected negotiations. Despite the government officials in the North West pleading with the prime minister to negotiate, says McLean, the Prime Minister awaited the inevitable showdown.
McLean admits that “it is unlikely that positive proof of a government conspiracy to create a rebellion in the West will ever be uncovered. However, he stresses that “the evidence presented here suggests that rebellion may have been fostered by the federal government, using Lawrence Clarke as an ’agent provocateur, as a means of making it politically possible to get further funding for the bankrupt CPR in 1885.”
As a consequence of the Rebellion the traditional way of life for the Métis ended. Their nation was defeated, their leader executed, their homes burned and looted, their people dispersed. Central Canada’s vision of opening of the West would carry the day.
The final chapter of this book, which is well worth reading, looks at the Métis in predominantly white society in the twentieth century where as McLean puts it: “[The Métis] poorly educated, poorly housed, plagued with poverty and related social disorders, they, along with other Natives, are still a marginalized people in the land that had once been their own”. The author finishes on a more positive note, saying that there is cause for optimism. Genuine progress has been made at advancing the causes of the Native peoples. Negative stereotypes of the Native people will die out when education, job opportunities and health care will be provided to all Canadians; “Only then will the proud and resilient Métis people really be out of the wilderness — home from the hill.”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, pp. 40–41. Read the rest of this issue →
