A Métis Family in the Detroit River Region and Pays d'en Haut

Abstract

The Michigan Historical Review 42.2 (Fall 2016): 67-80©2016 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved A Métis Family in the Detroit River Region and Pays d’en Haut By James LaForest The history of the Great Lakes French Canadian and Métis experience demands an understanding of context and concrete examples of what métissage looked like in our historical experience.1 That it needs to be written is due in part to controversial writings by respected scholars and genealogists. Genealogical facts have been glossed over, distorted, or interpreted in ways that are biased toward a worldview that privileges one aspect of our history, the European aspect, over any other. Furthermore, the history of some Métis has been misused to project a historical narrative that belies the actual experience of our local and regional culture. Métis identity is a complicated and controversial topic. In Canada, registered, documented Métis are considered to be an Aboriginal people. Yet some argue that only a particular group of people with ancestors placed at a particular place and time, such as the Red River area under Louis Riel, should be considered Métis. Still others argue that Métis is a category, lifestyle, and sense of being that arose much earlier than the midnineteenth century, the era some scholars point to as the “ethnogenesis” of Métis culture.2 Métis identity is even more problematic in the United States, where Métis status is less understood and has largely been associated with such Western states as North Dakota and Montana and the nineteenth-century Manitoba Métis culture. Contemporary scholars, genealogists, and activists often reinforce such perceptions by using standards that define ethnic groups and restrict the understanding of who can be considered Métis thus diminishing claims to any legitimate perpetuation of culture. One example is an all-too-common claim, as documented recently by historian 1 As part of the research for this paper I was provided with narrative descriptions of family lineages submitted by descendants of First Nations, Métis, and early French Canadian ancestors in the Pays d’en Haut. Many of these descendants later congregated in the Detroit River region and along the shores of Lake St. Clair and Frenchtown/River Raisin. 2 Linc Kesler, Aboriginal Identity and Terminology, University of British Columbia. http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/?id=9494. 68 The Michigan Historical Review Karen L. Marrero, that when Indian women married French or French Canadian men their children took the father’s culture and all subsequent generations should be considered European.3 But proving cultural genesis and continuity may employ political consciousness, musical traditions, religious beliefs, land claims, and documentation to show how a particular group of people is distinguishable from other groups. Ethnonyms, or names applied to ethnic groups, have been used historically to assert a cultural identity, such as with the Métis Nation of Ontario. But other standards of proof, such as endogamy, can be used to deny cultural transmission to descendants of mixed French Canadian and Indigenous families in the upper Midwest. Endogamy, the practice of marrying within your own group, is believed to be the standard way of perpetuating a culture from generation to generation through bloodlines as well as customs. Yet this standard conflicts with the very nature of Métis identity, which is predicated on the marriage of European and Indigenous peoples, a practice which began in the earliest days of New France and continues today. To be Métis must include the necessity of “marrying out.” Strict endogamy therefore is an unreasonable standard by which to judge Métis identity and cultural status. Métis identity must be understood by means of a modified endogamy, as illustrated in the case of one extended family: the descendants of Jean Gauthier dit Saguingoura, a late seventeenth-century engagé from Lachine, Quebec. Within this (and other) families, marriages between Métis individuals, between French/French Canadians and Métis, between Métis and First Nations, and between First Nations and French Canadians should all be understood as the experience of an “intercultural endogamy” that was perpetuated over many generations.4 While each of...