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I. The M
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I. The Metis Family: Origins and Characteristics The writer of the following pages was born, and has passed his lifetime, among the Ojibways of Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi. His ancestors on the maternal side, have been in close connection with this tribe for the past one hundred and fifty years. Speaking their language perfectly, and connected with them through the strong ties of blood, he has ever felt a deep interest in their welfare and fate, and has deemed it a duty to save their traditions from oblivion, and to collect every fact concerning them, which the advantages he possesses have enabled him to procure. William W. Warren, History of The Ojibway Nation1 W illiam Warren, who spent one year as a boarding student at the Mackinaw Mission from 1831 to 1832, tells us how the Metis came about when he relates how the French came to live among the Chippewa in order to trade. The Chippewa had established extensive trading networks long before the French arrived, and they incorporated the newcomers into their system without seriously disrupting their social order. Relationships soon developed between the Chippewa and the French that transcended the exchanges of goods and furs. Warren tells us: "Another bond which soon more firmly attached them one to another with strong ties of friendship, was created by the Frenchmen taking the women of the Ojibways as wives, and rearing large families who remained in the count!)', and to this day [1853], the mixture and bonds of blood between these two people has been perpetuated, and remains unbroken."2 In a few words, Warren captured the genesis of his own people, the Metis, and their close and unbroken ties with both their Chippewa and French heritages. Warren described an important segment on the middle ground that bound together the people whose livelihood revolved around the fur trade. Since the 1670s, when Mathurin Cadot, Warrens maternal great-great-great-grandfather, BATTLE FOR THE SOUL first came to the Lake Superior country, Warren's Chippewa and French relatives had been making accommodations with each other.3 Only in this way could people who had very different world views create a society that held together. When change led to accommodation, working relationships resulted. The Chippewa and French built their fur-trade society in such a way that Chippewa could still be Chippewa, French could still be French, and the Metis could become a people who drew upon the cultures of both of their parents. In the story which follows we see how people responded to challenges presented to them when different ethnic groups entered their world. Change often threatened the social equilibrium that allowed the middle ground to operate, but the Chippewa, French, Metis, British, and Americans renegotiated the terms of accommodation that maintained stability in the fur-trade society into the 1830s. The Chippewa and Metis inhabited a vast area reaching from beneath the limestone bluffs on Mackinac Island to the Red River of Minnesota. In these forested lands characterized by long, cold winters, a short growing season, and poor soil, an abundance of fur-bearing animals such as beaver and muskrat thrived in the numerous lakes, cold streams, and the rivers which ultimately emptied into Lake Superior or the Mississippi River. These same bodies of water formed an intricate natural transportation network. Navigable water connected Mackinac to the western end of Lake Superior and to interior regions through the Montreal, Brule, and St. Louis Rivers. Along these waterways the Native peoples and the French created a society that pivoted on the fur trade.4 By the 1820s, a social hierarchy had evolved from the various roles played by men in the fur trade. While the basic structure remained the same over many generations, managerial control of the trade passed from French-Canadian, to British, and finally to American hands. At the top stood the traders, followed by clerks, and at the bottom were the far more numerous voyageurs or boatmen. Metis men might be traders, but they were far more likely to be clerks or boatmen . While by the 1820s this basic structure had been in place for a century, the ethnicity of the traders' class changed when political control of the region passed to another nation. Following the conclusion of the French and Indian War, British merchants displaced French Canadians as traders; similarly after the War of 1812, Americans pushed out their British predecessors. While many former traders continued to work as clerks, this phenomenon had...