The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

Were Métis Really Unwelcome?

From time to time in my research, I have encountered references or suggestions that Métis were unwelcome not only in settler towns but also in other Indigenous communities. Hence, these often 1980s-era accounts declaimed, unwelcome among both their mothers' people and their fathers', Métis were forced to become distinct people, trapped in-between, unable to succeed anywhere. This ridiculous and racist narrative is not seriously and overtly repeated anymore, but it does linger. Part of why it lingers, besides persistent racism, is that there seems to be a confused memory in back of the racist story. Like many Indigenous peoples with strong relationships to the plains and parklands, it was common for Métis to travel considerable distances in wide circuits over the course of a year. Portions and loops of this travel came of particular harvesting decisions for the year, visiting relatives and allies, and taking part in ceremony and trade, among other things. Specific Métis families were known to have ongoing trade connections and interests enabling them to participate in freighting and distributing distant-sourced Indigenous trade goods and european trade goods over and through much of the northern plains. This put their families and communities at higher risk of exposure to european infectious diseases, which the europeans and their locally born non-Métis progeny often had no or little interest in curbing. There were important exceptions among the fur traders, including the hudson's bay company which was delegated responsibility for distribution of basic medical supplies, including smallpox vaccination drives. But, traders from all fur companies sought to bar Indigenous peoples from entering their fur trade premises, relegating them to counter front access points or else sending traders "en dérouine" in order to trade in person on the land. Métis didn't get exceptions to these restrictions, except for those who were sons of higher level fur traders, such as factors and postmasters.

Cover of Ray Ellenwood's english translation of Vanishing Spaces: The Memoirs of Louis Goulet, originally edited into a single text by Guillaume Charette from a newspaper article series. Winnipeg: Editions Bois-Brûlé, 1976.

I had the basics of this information available to me when I first read the english translation of L'Éspaces de Louis Goulet, although at the time I was more interested in the maps on the fly leaves of the book and interpreting the place names. Still, specific episodes stayed in my mind and I ended up returning to look at them more closely. As the dictionary of canadian biography recounts, Louis Goulet, son of Marie Beauchamp and Moïse Goulet was born in 1859 and died in 1936. He passed his entire life on the northern plains, working over the region as a freighter, cowboy, scout, trader, and interpreter among other related jobs. He saw at least the aftermath of both Métis resistance movements of the nineteenth century, and took part in some of the last great bison hunts as a child and a young man. Therefore Goulet's memoirs have been of continuing interest for both Indigenous and settler historians, although the latter are not always well-equipped to make sense of them.

One of the episodes I have returned to is one from when Goulet was around ten years old, travelling with his family to saint albert in alberta to spend the winter. After two days travel along the Assiniboine River still inside Manitoba, he explained:

Before arriving at Beaver River we'd made a little detour by way of La Coquille Pilée (The Shell Pile), to please the old folks, who called the place La Cotchille Pilée. It was a plain about a hundred or a hundred and twenty miles square, completely covered with shrubs eight or ten feet high that the old-timers called bois de graine de chapelet: bead-wood or rosary-wood.

This was a small tree with very hard wood, smooth black bark and bright silvery leaves. The seeds it bears are silvery and about the size of a yellow bean. I don't know why it was called bead-wood unless it was because of the size and shape of the seed. Because of the colour of this shrub, the English were about to change the name of La Coquille Pilée to Whitewood, its present name.

The old people wanted to go there because it used to be a popular spot for wintering over sixty or seventy years before. One year, a group of one hundred to one hundred and fifty Métis families from Red River were set up there for the winter, with a big camp of Cree Indians nearby. During the winter, the Cree camp was hit with a bad epidemic of smallpox. Dogs carried the germs of the terrible disease into the Métis winter camp, which was totally wiped out in a matter of days. Not a single Métis escaped alive. There wasn't even anybody to bury the dead who became carrion for wolves the rest of the winter and for crows in the spring.

So far I have no found any other comment about this place, nor the terrible smallpox epidemic in an in depth way. Yet, this must have been a massive event for the Indigenous peoples of the northern plains. Then again, this meant it was in effect "out of sight" to most newcomers, and perhaps even more so to subsequent historians focussed on the written record as made and curated by fur traders and other colonial officials.

What I did find at last, thanks to the university of alberta digitizing its collection of alberta government publications and copying the results into their corner of the internet archive, is the archaeological report on the Buffalo Lake Métis site. Although it does not appear Goulet ever spent time at Buffalo Lake, the historical setting the authors set out for the site reveals some information relevant to the smallpox epidemic memorialized by the Métis elders at La Coquille Pilée.

There was a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1836 and early 1837 among the Blackfeet, the Stoneys in the Banff-Morley-Rocky Mountain House district, and in the Lower Saskatchewan districts between Battleford and Cumberland. No reports reached company officers at Edmonton until some months after the epidemic had died down (Simpson 1821-1854, Rowand to Simpson, November, 1837), and estimates of death cannot be stated with any accuracy. Upon hearing of this plague, it appears that the freemen at Red River decided to return to the Upper Saskatchewan. In any case, various Upper Saskatchewan settlements came into existence about 1838 to 1840 and were occupied, essentially continuously, from that time onwards (Scrip Applications) .

The timing and location of this smallpox epidemic is matches up with the details recounted by Goulet from the Métis elders. The parenthetical references are to fur trader's journals and letters, and Métis scrip applications. A few pages on they add more about this epidemic, including the specific impacts of the particular smallpox variant that caused it.

...the smallpox epidemic was the most decisive. Indeed, among the Blackfoot Confederacy, it is still "the Great Plague" (Dempsey 1965; Kathleen Day, personal communication), the illness never surpassed. Even in areas less badly affected, the memory of it was still very clear, and a matter of regular conversation as late as the 1940's (Day 1985).

The illness itself remains somewhat mysterious. The general symptoms suggest that the strain was viral, and very closely resembled the 1836-1837 smallpox strain. Neither was a normal smallpox. Vaccination had been in practice during both epidemics, and as it did not prevent attacks, the Hudson's Bay Company's officers believed the vaccine was defective. However, further examination of the documents produces an alternative conclusion: normal vaccination prevented death. Apparently, by December, 1870, it was evident that survivors of the 1836-1837 disease were immune, and, at this time, observers noted that the disease particularly attacked younger people and recent immigrants.

The symptoms were consistently described. The first indication was a headache, ranging from negligible to severe, but not an obvious cause for alarm. However, within a day, the victim became suddenly weak, and within a short time (not more than twelve hours afterwards) a very high fever developed. The victim felt a burning sensation, and became extremely sensitive of touch. This last symptom marked the point at which the sores that led to subsequent scarring appeared. The crisis of life or death followed very shortly. A survivor needed four to six weeks to attain any semblance of health.

The disease was not only severe in the short run, but it normally led to a prolonged weakness of the body's entire system, and at least some people were permanently affected. There were usually bad cases of rheumatoid arthritis, and the entire circulatory system was generally affected. The doctors of the 1890's described the circulatory illnesses as "bizarre" (Grandin, Transcripts, Vols. 1-3,; Vol. 5, Part 7). It is possible that the very high incidence of lung disease and scrofula among treaty Indians (Lac Ste Anne, Liber Animarum, 1842-1859; Vegreville 1883-1893; 1894; Indian Department, 1879-98, specifically 1883-1898) and the sometimes fatal effects of alcohol on the native people arise from the same prolonged weaknesses (Hudsons Bay Company Post Journals, various posts, especially Rocky Mountain House; Griesbach 1958:1-6; Fryer 1982; OMI Missions 1874:500-502; Dempsey 1961:12-13). Neither characteristic seems to have been present prior to 1870. It is also noteworthy that infant mortality rose sharply during 1870 (Christie 1871; Day 1985), although as far as one can judge, the life expectancy of adults remained constant.

The actual rates of death and survival are ultimately matters of conjecture, particularly since the numbers of Metis, Europeans, and Indians in the northern half of the Upper Saskatchewan District were normally underestimated. Ultimately, the best quantitative measurement of smallpox mortality is the proportion of surviving children (Dempsey 1961:12; Day 1985). This figure steadily declines as the people examined are located farther to the south. In the northern woods, where about 10% of all people died, 63% of the survivors were children. In the Edmonton, St. Albert, and Lac Ste. Anne areas, the individuals' records examined showed a death rate of 24%; and 57% of the survivors were children. But among the Blackfoot Confederacy, only 34% of the survivors were children. Given this relationship, the mortality among the Blackfoot Confederacy peoples seems to have been about 40%. The Blackfoot tribe itself may have suffered a mortality of 50%. This is in accord with the chronology of the disease; it was first observed at Fort Union, Missouri, in the fall of 1869, was among the Blackfeet in spring of 1870, reached St. Albert in July, and Fort Carlton about October. Exposure, exhaustion, and disturbance were additional dangers on the Plains, and took their added toll.

The parenthetical references add new sources including missionaries' letters and records, books presenting oral history shared with High Dempsey by Blackfoot elders, and government reports. Some parts chime eerily with today's ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the post-smallpox circulatory disease to the different proportions of surviving children to surviving adults. According to his entry in the dictionary of canadian biography, Goulet was over six feet tall, strong and physically healthy throughout his life. If he had not lost his sight, he likely would have remained active in the cattle or mercantile trade. He is not the only Métis person whose physique was remarked on in the later nineteenth century, and it now seems this was not just because he had a reputation as a boxer and was partly caught up in the aftermath of the 1885 Métis Resistance. He was born after the smallpox epidemic that impacted the health of so many others in his family and wider community.

It is now also easier to understand why this episode is not recounted in much detail by Métis historians to date. For one thing, the Indigenous nation most directly and severely impacted was the Blackfoot Confederacy, and they have understandably not been inclined to extensively discuss it. For another, Métis survivors had a great deal else to distract them from their own terrible encounter with it. Typically moving onto the plains and away from the trading posts to winter was a solid strategy for avoiding infectious disease brewing at trader's posts and other places newcomers from places unknown would gather, so long as no one had gone to any of them before the new pathogen had shown up or become established. If they had the misfortune to catch an illness at one of those gathering places, moving out onto the plains could only spread it to otherwise isolated communities and groups. If word of such illnesses spread ahead of Métis coming from the same direction, they might indeed be encouraged to remain apart, especially if anyone in the Métis group was already ill. The misfortune is all the crueller for the Cree and Métis memorialized at La Cotchille Pilée, where even though they were camped separately when the smallpox came, the Cree community's dogs accidentally brought the disease to the Métis.