Public Mothers: Native American and Metis Women as Creole Mediators in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest

Abstract: During the early nineteenth century, the largely Francophone, mixed-ancestry residents of the western Great Lakes region were faced with massive immigration of Anglophone whites who colonized the region, imposing a new U.S. government, economy, and legal system on the old Creole communities. Many of these immigrants from different cultural backgrounds in the eastern United States brought their prejudices and fears with them, attitudes that had the power to alienate and marginalize the old residents. This article explores the ways in which some women of color found techniques to mediate between cultural groups, using hospitality, charity, and health care to negotiate overlapping ideals of womanhood common to both Anglos and Native-descended people. In so doing, they won praise from both new and old neighbors, as they used Creole patterns of network-building to smooth community relations.

On the northwestern shore of Lake Michigan's Green Bay, where the Menominee River flows into the lake along an old fur trade route, there is a city straddling the border of Wisconsin and Michigan. This city, and the county that surrounds it, are named for a woman of color: she was Marinette Chevalier, and the place name is Marinette. A Menominee, Ojibwe, and French Métisse (mixed-race woman) related to a prominent Ojibwe family, she married one fur trader, separated from him and then married another according to "the custom of the country," working side-by-side with each husband at the mouth of the Menominee River, a region in which many Indians spent part of their year. ¹ She eventually separated from her second husband, took over the management of the trading post with the help of her children, and became extremely successful in business and in cultivating warm relationships with the Indian people living in the area, many of whom were her kin.

When she was in her twenties, the War of 1812 clamped U.S. sovereignty onto this northern borderland region, and the Native people and fur-trade families were colonized by the United States. The conquering army built new forts and fortified older ones, enforcing control to be administered by a new judicial and legislative system. Although Marinette Chevalier and most of the other residents spoke French and/or Indian languages, the United States imposed English as a new court language. Waves of immigrants from the eastern United States and even some from Europe swarmed into the Midwest, bringing different ideas about race, class, and gender. Before long, such people as Marinette Chevalier were minorities in their own communities. Yet when English-speaking immigrants began to move into the Menominee River area, they, like the local Indians and Métis people, became her customers, neighbors, and friends.

An essay in the Michigan Pioneer Society's 1877 yearbook recounting the history of Menominee County praised Marinette Chevalier. The Anglophone author chose not to dwell on her entrepreneurial experiences, but focused instead on another of her roles. According to the article, "Marinette died in 1863, highly honored by all the residents about the river. She was 72 years old when she died, and had been looked to as a mother by all the early settlers and Indians, for she had always been ready to assist the needy and comfort the distressed." ² Not only are her experiences remarkable, but also is the fact that the Anglo writer for the pioneer society noted and even celebrated this Métis woman, and that a city and county (now in Wisconsin) were named in her honor. ³

While Marinette Chevalier's experiences were notable, they were not unique. Many other women whose lives spanned the transition to U.S. control of the Midwest worked to mediate between cultural groups, as did some of their brothers, sons, and husbands. During the nineteenth century, as the newcomers were changing the region...