Strangers in Blood

by Brown, Jennifer S. H.

• ISBN13: 9780806128139
• ISBN10: 0806128135
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Summary

For two centuries (1670-1870), English, Scottish, and Canadian fur traders voyaged the myriad waterways of Rupert's Land, the vast territory charted to the Hudson's Bay Company and later splintered among five Canadian provinces and four American states. The knowledge and support of northern Native peoples were critical to the newcomer's survival and success. With acquaintance and alliance came intermarriage, and the unions of European traders and Native women generated thousands of descendants. Jennifer Brown's Strangers in Bloodis the first work to look systematically at these parents and their children. Brown focuses on Hudson's Bay Company officers and North West Company wintering partners and clerks-those whose relationships are best known from post journals, correspondence, accounts, and wills. The durability of such families varied greatly. Settlers, missionaries, European women, and sometimes the courts challenged fur trade marriages. Some officers' Scottish and Canadian relatives dismissed Native wives and "Indian" progeny as illegitimate. Traders who took these ties seriously were obliged to defend them, to leave wills recognizing their wives and children, and to secure their legal and social status-to prove that they were kin, not "strangers in blood." Brown illustrates that the lives and identities of these children were shaped by factors far more complex than "blood." Sons and daughters diverged along paths affected by gender. Some descendants became Metis and espoused Metis nationhood under Louis Riel. Others rejected or were never offered that course-they passed into white or Indian communities or, in some instances, identified themselves (without prejudice) as "half breeds." The fur trade did not coalesce into a single society. Rather, like Rupert's Land, it splintered, and the historical consequences have been with us ever since.

Author Biography

Jennifer S.H. Brown is a Professor of History at the University of Winnipeg.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
The Backgrounds and Antecedents of the British Traders	p. 1
Company Men with a Difference: The London and Montreal Britishers	p. 23
Company Men and Native Women in Hudson Bay	p. 51
North West Company Men and Native Women	p. 81
Gentlemen of 1821: New Directions in Fur Trade Social Life	p. 111
Different of Loyalties: Sexual and Marital Relationships of Company Officers after 1821	p. 131
Fur Trade Parents and Children before 1821	p. 153
Patterns and Problems of "Placing": Company Offspring in Britain and Canada after 1821	p. 177
Fur Trade Sons and Daughters in a New Company Context	p. 199
References	p. 221
Index	p. 239
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.